Blog 3 North By North West

One of the most influential scenes in North by North west is the crop duster scene, in order to understand the thriller genre further, i have analysed a key scene from one Hitchcock's most iconic scenes.

Hitchcok said thrillers allows the audience to put their toe in the cold water of fear to see what is like, so this means that he wants us to experience it ourselves, it makes us to emotionally think that we are there but we are actually not. This scene is a great way for us to actually experience that, as we are constantly anticipating on what is going to happen. and if he really does get killed or not.

In this scene I looked at the camera work;
which is the high or low shots , the long or medium shots, the close ups, the establish shots.In the first shot of the scene, there was an of establishing shots to show us where exactly the character is, which was the country side.

Also there was quiet a lot of POV shots when the car goes past, the reason for this shot allows the audience to feel like that they are actually there, it puts the audience in the characters shoes and makes us feel sorry for them so we are forced to care.

There are also some over the shoulder shots to catch the expression of the characters faces, and some Tracking shots which takes the audience along with the action as we see him running for safety.

There was also close ups, Hitchcock liked the subjective viewpoint when we see the close ups of the faces of the two characters and what they are looking at and their reactions to what they can see, Hitchcock said he wanted to transfer the menace that appears on screen into the minds of the audience.

I looked at the sound in this scene  and tried to see if i could spot different sounds and the effect that it would have on the audience, the ex
amples of sounds i was looking at; diegetic and non diegetic sound , parallel/ contrapunel sounds or even the pace of the scene.
In this scene some of the sounds are parallel and there are some diegetic sounds, which is sounds that the audience and the characters can hear, for example the sounds of the bus going past and the sounds of the cars.

In the start there is no music which indicates to us that something is about go wrong which leaves the audience anticipated and eager to see what is going to on and what will happen next.

Alfred Hitchcock was very smart to not have music during this scene also contrasts to location, as in the country side it is very quiet and peaceful. then eventually the juxstapostion kicks in when we hear the crop duster as it all of a sudden becomes very noisy and countrysides are not noisy.
in the scene of both men staring at each other the sound is very basic, nothing interesting is occurring at the moment.
                                                                               
the misenscene is also very important in this scene, the main character is wearing a suit, which makes him stand out as he is in the countryside so it shows how he is not from civilization, he is out of his comfort zone, the props is also very important as it has a link into what the country side is like, it is so empty and alone that there is nothing we can see, this sets the atmosphere of the scene, we can also see some lowkey lighting, which is normally used horror movies or thriller movies,this is when the lighting has both bright and dark areas in the frame , this is often used to unerve the audience.