Technical Analysis Conclusion

For my technical analyses I have looked at two other Hitchcock films, Rear Window (1954) and The Birds (1963), and Disturbia (Caruso, 2007) and found that there are many correlations between the two, however they vary also.

I chose Rear Window and The Birds because Psycho was directed by Hitchcock in between these two, and so this allowed me to see how Hitchcock's filming changed during the creation of the three films, and whilst much of the camera techniques changed between the release dates of Rear Window and The Birds there is still a lot of the individuality that Hitchcock brings in to his films in all three. For example Hitchcock's films work off of characters reactions, all of which are apparent within all of the films, as every shot could be argued as a shot-reverse-shot, in which we see something from the character's point-of-view (POV) followed by a shot of their reaction to this, such as the camera looking as a car speeds towards "the audience", followed by Tippi Hedren backing off as much as possible as the car carries on towards her, then we go back to a shot of the vehicle, and so on.
This is also shown in Rear Window as James Stewart's shots are back and forth from him to the surrounding area of the flat.

The use of shot-reverse-shot also becomes apparent within Caruso's Disturbia, as for a lot of the shots within the  scene, "Caught in the Act," the audience are positioned in a POV through the camcorder lens, which will then be followed by a shot of Shia LaBeouf's character reacting to what the audience have just witnessed. This carries on for much of the scene, so that the audience can understand, and feel, the same amount of fear and angst that LaBeouf shows.

One thing that I have also noticed in the works of Hitchcock is his use of "basic" shots, by which I mean the camera stays fairly static throughout and stays eye level and straight, instead of using techniques such as the Dutch tilt. This is extremely effective in all of his films as it doesn't explicitly tell the audience that something bad will happen, and it keeps the movie quite human and so the audience feels like they are a part of the film and action, rather than feeling that they are watching through the eyes of the camera because they're positioned through a bird's eye view.

As for music, which is an important of aspect of film as a whole, it is very much more than a simple gimmick with Hitchcock's and Caruso's films, in a sense it is another character more likely to be on the antagonist's side than the heroes, as the use of it as a "jump scare" for audiences adds to the feeling of being inside the movie, as before a character is being attacked the tension builds through the use of an eerie silence or a much lighter and fainter piece of music, which suddenly erupts into a crescendo when the evil character presents themselves, either appearing from a place they could not previously have been seen from or, more scarily, when they get grabbed from behind. This shows why the music is so important for horror films as it really connects with the audience and enhances the enjoyment with a sense of camaraderie with the viewer, as my previous experience of cinema going has shown when going to see a Paranormal Activity films in which after each jump scare deployed on the viewer caused everyone to look around to each other as the laughs begin to fill the cinema as everyone suddenly feels they have been through the same terrifying ordeal together.