Talk:The Birds (film)

References to use

Please add to the list references that can be used for the film article.

• King, Mike (2008). "The Birds". The American Cinema of Excess: Extremes of the National Mind on Film. McFarland. p. 132. ISBN 0786439882.

Special Effects

It would be interesting to cover the use of special effects in The Birds. This movie has over 300 special effects shot. It is notable for the use of the Disney-developped Sodium Vapor Process. Hitchcock disliked location shooting, so he used this process to shot close-ups of his actors on a sound stage where he could have complete control over the lighting, and then inserted these shots over location-shot backgrounds. He also used rotoscoping (for some of the bird shots), and innovative matte painting use (for instance for the aerial view of the town with the gas station fire). The last shot of the movie (the car slowly leaves the house while birds cover the ground) is a composition of multiple elements shot separately, because the production did not have enough birds. This is very well covered in the documentary All About 'The Birds', included in the Hitchcock Masterpiece Collection DVD set.

For anyone who wants to tackle this topic, there's a large amount of useful information in this article: The Making of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Davepattern (talk) 07:52, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Character List

like other film articles, shouldn't this have a list of characters with their corresponding actor in two columns, or something to that effect? 65.185.191.51 03:07, 26 October 2006 (UTC)kickasskat

Random characters that were here since February 2007 have been removed. -70.20.127.71 01:39, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Sources seriously needed

This article, especially the Production section, needs to be sourced and quickly. The Production section has the appearance of original research, and risks being deleted if verifiable sources can't be found and added.
Jim Dunning | talk 03:15, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Production section removed for lack of refs

I removed the entire Production section. It was completely without sources and may very well contain a lot of original research. On the chance some of it has some valid material, I'm relocating it to here as research fodder.
Jim Dunning | talk 00:12, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Production

The film depicts a series of bird attacks on the residents of a Californian seaside village named Bodega Bay. In Daphne du Maurier's story, the birds attacked Britain, not California. The film was shot on location both in Bodega Bay and the nearby village of Bodega, the location of the historic school building used in the production, The Potter School. This was the second of Hitchcock's films to be shot in Sonoma County; the first was Shadow of a Doubt, filmed mostly in Sonoma County's county seat, Santa Rosa. Hitchcock also filmed a few scenes in downtown San Francisco, including his own cameo in which he walked out of the pet store with his own dogs.

Hitchcock was inspired by a report in the 18 August 1961 issue of the Santa Cruz, California Sentinel newspaper of birds exhibiting strange and sometimes violent behavior. This event was brought up in the film between the town residents in the Tides diner.

Hedren was informed that mechanical birds would be used for the terrifying and brutal attic scene. Instead, live birds were hurled at her by prop men for a week. When one nearly gouged her eye she became hysterical, collapsed and spent a week haunted by "nightmares filled with flapping birds". After visiting the set Cary Grant praised her as "one very brave lady".

Instead of a typical film soundtrack, Hitchcock had Oskar Sala painstakingly create bird sounds on his trautonium, which were then scored to the movie by Bernard Herrmann. No natural bird sounds were used. There is a very high-pitched soundtrack of electronic noise through the film which subconsciously adds to the tension experienced by the viewer. Just prior to the attack on the school children, as they run from the historic school, they sing an unaccompanied song. No musical score accompanies the film.

Hitchcock insisted that the film be without a final "The End", which further hints at the lyrical nature of the movie (called by Federico Fellini: "an apocalyptical poem"). Hitchcock reportedly did consider a final shot of the Golden Gate Bridge covered with birds, implying that the birds would not stop with their local attacks.

The highly-anticipated film was launched with an elaborate promotional campaign, inaugurated with the Hitchcock-engineered phrase, "The birds is coming!" Hitchcock appeared with birds on his shoulder on the cover of Life magazine. Hedren appeared on the cover of Look magazine with the line "Hitchcock's New Grace Kelly."

Hitchcock had also released a five-minute trailer featuring himself making a presentation on his "forthcoming lecture about the birds and their age-long relationship with man", giving numerous sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek examples "in which these noble creatures have added to the beauty of the world" such as cavalier hats, eggs, shotguns, and zoos. Actually footage from the film itself is not shown until the last minute of the trailer.

A 1994 cable television movie sequel The Birds II: Land's End featured Brad Johnson and Chelsea Field. Tippi Hedren also appeared in a supporting role, playing a different character than she did in the original film.

Much of this can be sourced. At the very least, not mentioning [The Birds (story)] anywhere in the article is a pretty serious flaw. 205.166.76.15 (talk) 18:42, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

It's probably better to leave such things in the article and tag it for sources than remove it, surely? [1] is a good source for the trailer. Шизомби (talk) 05:17, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Need Inventory of Bird Species

Being Wikipedia, we sorely need a section on the birds themselves -- species descriptions, realism of behavior vs natural birds, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.36.156.123 (talk) 07:40, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Remake

For info - according to IMDb, the remake now has a 2011 release. Lugnuts (talk) 09:05, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Trivia

Unlike most other films of its era, The Birds does not have a music score or an ending in the conventional sense. The soundtrack was supervised by Bernard Herrmann; bird cries and wingflaps were played on an expanded Trautonium (called the Mixtur Trautonium) by Oskar Sala, assisted by German composer Remi Gassmann. The scene in which Hedren is attacked in the attic took a whole week to shoot. Real birds were tied to the actress and hurled at her. One bird actually cut her face just under her eye. The scene was so stressful for the actress that she had a breakdown. She has been quoted as saying that it was "the worst week of [her] life."

When the bird crashes into the window of the phone booth, it was not meant to break. Crew members spent an entire day picking glass fragments out of Hedren's face.

The uncredited radio announcer is Ken Ackerman, a longtime San Francisco radio personality.

Trivia taken from article. --Soetermans | is listening | what he'd do now? 12:59, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Future

What should we do about this remake? There a few important details circulating around. We can't add a future section, it would be irrelevant. See A Nightmare on Elm Street and A Nightmare on Elm Street (franchise) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010 film). This is what happened over there, do we have enough details to start it's own page? ISTHnR | Knock Knock | Who's There? 23:50, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Here, add all updates to this sandbox first, once we get enough details we'll transfer it over, good for a couple of months anyway! Let's get some details together. ISTHnR | Knock Knock | Who's There? 23:54, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

I've created a remake section, this will help for anyone looking for the new film and stop them form creating it's own article, it also helps the Platinum Dunes navigation box ISTHnR | Knock Knock | Who's There? 00:01, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Wait until there is some definitive information about a remake instead of speculation to update the article. You also have no source information listed. Sottolacqua (talk) 00:04, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I added the section back with more info ISTHnR | Knock Knock | Who's There? 01:47, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Frank Baker's novel The Birds

http://www.labyrinth.net.au/%7Emuffin/wanted_for_murder_c.html perhaps deserves a mention. Шизомби (talk) 05:12, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Love-birds.

I'm wondering why there isn't a single mention of the love-birds in the plot description, or why there is no mention of birds at all up until a scene around the 25-minute mark where Melanie is attacked by seagull. Does the author of this feel it's not relevant that the two protagonists met in a bird shop, or that the pretence of Melanie's visit to Bodega Bay being to bring two love-birds as a gift to his sister is merely incidental? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.10.7.113 (talk) 01:07, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Removed from Trivia section for lack of citation

The schoolhouse itself, which was built in 1873, and taught students until the 1950's, was mentioned to be haunted by many cast members. Tippi Hedren herself admitted that she felt at times that "the building seemed immensely populated...but there was nobody there." When Hitchcock was informed of this, according to Hedren, he was even more encouraged to film there. Since then, the building has been purchased by a family. They, as well as tourists, claim the appearance of ghosts, most notably of a young girl wandering the grounds and occasionally interacting with people. (Added by User 174.102.189.142 on 16 December 2010) The News Hound 18:33, 21 December 2010 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by The News Hound (talk • contribs)

Contributions to WP must be attributed to reliable sources. Content will be removed without reliable sources. IMDb is not considered a reliable source. The JPS^{talk to me} 17:04, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Encyclopedic tone

First, I should say that there be a "Reception" heading to cover both critical, and public response to help this article out. But much of the tone of the current article seems fan-based. Surely, there is much documented material to both make an article over a film be more authoritative, and also align itself with the wiki standard of covering movies? o0drogue0o 09:52, 20 January 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by O0drogue0o (talk • contribs)

Yup. Enjoy writing... The JPS^{talk to me} 17:00, 21 January 2011 (UTC)