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The Birds (1963)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock · Shot by Robert Burks · Cut by George Tomasini · Music by Bernard Herrmann · 119 min
How it was made
- The special effects for the attacking birds were split across four studios: Walt Disney, using the sodium-vapour yellow-screen matte process developed by animator Ub Iwerks, MGM, Film Effects of Hollywood, and 20th Century-Fox, whose crews worked two 11-hour shifts a day for six weeks on the crow-attack sequence alone.
- Iwerks used an optical printer to multiply a small number of live sparrows into a larger flock for the chimney-invasion scene, shooting them inside an enclosed glass booth.
- The finished film contains 370 separate effects shots; the final shot alone is a composite of 32 separate elements.
- Hitchcock rejected a conventional score, instead having Remi Gassmann and Oskar Sala design an electronic soundtrack using the Trautonium, an early electroacoustic instrument, for the bird calls and ambient sound.
- Sparrows for the attic scene were caught by hand in the wild and had to be supplemented with birds bought from pet shops to fill out the shot.
Behind the scenes
Elsewhere
More by Alfred Hitchcock
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