Alfred Hitchcock: The Big Baby & TYFS Podcast

Our Thank You For Smoking podcasts were scheduled today, the planning was a little different though. Groups were scheduled to record in two groups. While the first bunch were off recording, the others had to listen to a lecture on our new narrative unit. Today was all about learning about the assembly of film, explain by Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock claims that the assembly of film determines it's context. The example we saw in class was of an old man looking at something, that something being a mom playing with her baby, the next shot is of him smiling, finding the baby charming. In a revision of the same scene the baby and it's mother are replaced with a woman in a bikini sunbathing. Although the first and third shots remained the same, when they replaced the baby with the attractive woman, all of a sudden the old man looks more like a pervert since he's now smiling at a girl in a bikini and not a baby. By changing only one thing, it changed the meaning of the entire scene. After seeing the presentation on this, the homework assigned was to insert a new picture in the middle of our choice, then explain what the new context of the scene is. Aside from that, we wrapped up with our last podcast and will continue with learning about narrative later on. By learning about assembly, we're learning how whatever a film chooses to show, determines it's entire narrative. Trailers often stretch this to their advantage, trailers often show scenes out of order to hide the real plot, sometimes they'll even show scenes that never make it into the final cut, the unknown is what gets people interested in the movie. Narrative is usually the main focal point of most films today, so in regards to that, this is a great start to an otherwise important subject when it comes to film.