The Birds - continuity exercise:

The Birds – continuity explanation:

We were asked to watch a short clip from Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” as it is excellent at demonstrating the use of continuity in a sequence and how the range of techniques work together to create a fantastic film. Continuity has been used successfully in this particular section of the movie for the reason that it highlights how each camera shot flows into one another elegantly and how it continues from the last scene/shot into the next one. Continuity is a particularly hard technique to get to grasp with and understand since you have to keep check of where the last shot was taken, how close the camera was to the characters and what angle it was facing, if any of these rules were changed even slightly it could completely mess up the scene/shot as it would no longer flow against one another and it would jump, suggesting that the person who filmed the shot was most likely to be an ‘amateur’. If the scenes/shot in a film do not flow gracefully between one another this will annoy the viewing audience as they will get confused as to why the camera shots keep changing angles and why it seems to jitter between each individual scene, this creates an unfortunate, unsuccessful movie.

Pics of the Birds

I have screen grabbed/shot two clips from Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” both shots in particular demonstrate the use of continuity successfully in this specific scene of the movie. This is depicted as the woman begins to open the front door from the outside of the house and as the scene changes we are shown the woman opening the front door but this time the camera shot is filmed inside the house. Miraculously, the camera stays in the same distance from when the camera was filming outside the house to when it began filming again inside the house. Clearly, this is an exceptionally good use of continuity as the scenes flow elegantly beside each other without and jumps or disruptions.

Halfway through the sequence, different effects and soundtracks are used to create anticipation and nervousness as we the viewing audience are uncertain as to what might appear onto our TV screens in the upcoming scenes. When the female character first comes into view, standing at the bedroom door, she hesitates for a brief moment before carefully and cautiously, pushes the door slightly ajar before peering into the room. One might say that this scene was produced in this particular way for the reason that it engages the viewing audience, allowing them to come up with a wide variety of thoughts and meanings as to why she might be hesitating to open the door. Additionally, the camera shots build up tension and apprehension as we are unsure as to what might take place in the following scene.

Moreover, when the woman appears in the kitchen glancing throughout the different rooms, the camera is presented as a medium shot, however moments later, the camera suddenly changes to an eye level close up, and this is continually used in filming to illustrate the actor/actresses expression.  In this scene, an eye level close up has been specifically used to emphasize the actress’s shocked expression and to draw attention to the direction in which she is glancing towards. In addition, this builds up further anticipation as we desperately want to understand what has happened in the scene and why the actress appears to look taken aback. Additionally, this particular scene of the movie has to be my favourite section of the sequence, simply because it demonstrates a fantastic and successful use of continuity and the use of camera shots and techniques are mesmerising. Each individual technique and camera shot is dissimilar and work extremely well together. Each scene flows pleasingly well alongside one another throughout the movie.