'The Birds' Deconstruction- Horror.

The Birds, directed by Alfred Hitchcock is a horror about a village being menaced by crows. The opening credits contain no moving shots, however simply uses blocked out black silhouettes of birds flying fast across the screen. iI begins with a white blank screen with a muffled sound of birds sqwuaking with wings violently flapping in the background. The sound begins before any visual effects are seen. This creates a sense of mystery and immediately directs the audiences attention to the sound only, leaving them questioning what it could be. This immediate use of ambiguity creates a sense of uncertainty and ultimately leaves the audiences in an unfamiliar and possibly uncomfortable situation. The credits are used simply yet effectively in a light blue colour, standing out against the contrasting white background and black bird silhouettes. As well as this, the font is a fairly standard rounded shape, which is contradictory to the usual conventions of a horror, being that of jagged, unstructured font types. These varied techniques dont follow the typical conventions of a horror genre, the font in particular. it is the sounds however, that when varied in volume, pitch and rhythm, creates a sense of unfamiliarity and disturbance: giving the audience an insight into the nature of the film to follow. The use of different bird sounds also creates an unfamiliar rhythm and combines both distressing sounds but also infrequent chirping, a somehwhat optimistic sound. During the middle of the opening credits, the colume pitch and amount of bird noises increases significantly. The noise mirrors that of an attack, being the sound of distressed, threaghtening noises. All of these techniques are frequently used in the horror genres, and in many ways this film opening is very typical of what we expect from a horror film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp5cgFf_GkA&feature=related