Way back when Gus Van Sant made his remake of "Psycho" in 1998, it was announced that Michael Bay was going to produce a remake of The Birds.
The movie was in development hell for some years -- with Naomi Watts attached for the Tippi Hedren role, and George Clooney suggested(in the press) for the Rod Taylor role.
Nothing came of it.
What a number of us thought was this: "What had been near impossible to pull off in 1963 -- the effects and live action bird attack sequences -- would be easy as pie in the 2000's: just hire Silicon Valley to put thousands of CGI birds on the screen." Hitchcock's achievement was achieved with the crude effects of 1963. It was a triumph.
Michael Bay's The Birds was never made, but I was cruising cable/streaming the other night and I stumbled on a 2003 movie called The Core -- about the core of the earth starting to malfunction, causing disaster movie level chaos.
Including: a mass bird attack in London -- Trafalgar Square, I think.
And there it was, just as I figured: doing a mass bird attack with CGI is pretty easy to do.
Truth be told, I don't think "The Core" had the budget for the BEST CGI -- some of the birds en masse look pretty fake and cartoony some of the time. But the rest of the time, we get what Hitchcock had to move miracles to get -- attacking birds -- and it looks "cool, but easy.
Its just as well that Michael Bay didn't make that "Birds."
I agree that the birds are quite convincing but think that the clip shows the difference a director makes! For Hitchcock every shot counts, has a logic to it, and many are very memorable. About all I remember from The Core's scene are the strange shots from the POV of a hand-held video-camera paid off with a shot of said camera abandoned on the ground. Why was this stuff even *in* the sequence?
I agree that the birds are quite convincing but think that the clip shows the difference a director makes! For Hitchcock every shot counts, has a logic to it, and many are very memorable.
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That's true, isn't it? And another reason why "Michael Bay's The Birds" likely would have been a "same old, same old" CGI spectacle without the eerie punch of Hitchcock's vision.
Recall that Hitchcock achieved his bird effects with COMBINATION of animated birds("painted onto the screen" like CGI); puppet birds (for some close-ups)-- and REAL trained birds. (Like the one who knocks over the gas station attendant.) there are stylistic choices throughout the film of just which KIND of birds to use.
I think my favorite shot in The Birds comes just before the last shot. The last shot is the famous shot with something like 350 separate pieces of film in one shot -- birds as far as the eye can see as the Brenners and Melanie. But the shot BEFORE that shot is great, too: a row of crows on the front porch fence, fluffing their black feathers and tilting their heads as if to say "This town ain't big enough for the both of us -- we're taking over now. Get out of here." It is a slightly angled shot of power and deadpan wit. Its pure Hitchcock.
As an "overall organic" experience, I prefer Psycho to The Birds, but I will ALWAYS be amazed at what Hitchcock achieved with The Birds as a TECHNICAL matter. As a technical matter, its probably his greatest film. He wanted and needed birds to mass, attack, strut, finagle, peck, fly, land...to do all sort of things that birds DON'T DO on command. But he got them to do it...whether real ,puppet or animated. One of the greatest technical effects movies ever made. Too bad the script and dramatic pacing of the first hour were off.
But what was achieved so amazingly in 1963 would be...easy as pie with CGI. Now.
PS. I'm reminded what some critic praised Hitchcock about: "He knew that films were meant to be looked at."
Truly, with so many of his films, your eye AND your mind take in the visuals on the screen and "drink them in." Its an experience like no other -- not like reading a book, not like watching a play. Three examples of great Hitchcock one-shot images:
North by Northwest: The angle on Mount Rushmore from alongside Lincoln's cheek, as Martin Landau struggles and falls about 30 feet down to a rocky ledge. The giant President's heads fill the screen, but Landau's downward fall is "action."
Psycho: Arbogast climbs the hill to the house in twilight/night. Its a rare "clear" shot of the motel (foreground) and house(background), and it communicates how this movie is at once very Gothic(the house, in the Dracula tradition) and very modern(as modern as the dapper Arbogast in suit and tie, and as the motel itself.)
The Birds: That final shot with hundreds of perched birds as far as the eye can see as the little car edges through them, goes around a corner, and disappears.
"The eyes have it" with these shots. You LOOK. You FEEL. You are enthralled. And you never forget these images...
About all I remember from The Core's scene are the strange shots from the POV of a hand-held video-camera paid off with a shot of said camera abandoned on the ground.
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I noticed that, and I remembered that, two years later with his "War of the Worlds," Spielberg would use the same gimmick - hand held video on the ground, etc.
Homage? Stealing? Borrowing?
I might add that Hitchcock himself considered filming "War of the Worlds" at one time, and some of his interest was transferred to The Birds. They are similar stories, though WOTW has a happy ending.
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Why was this stuff even *in* the sequence?
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Beats me -- again, Hitchcock's montages were more organized.
Interesting: In the core, we DID see a bird peck an eyeball or two in this sequence but it is not too graphic. The bird attack movie with the "bloody attacks on eyeballs" was the little-seen "The Birds II" -- a cable movie of the 90's starring Tippi Hedren but in a different role than Melanie Daniels. THAT movie went for what Hitchcock couldn't show -- people getting pecked in the eyes, while alive, and bleeding from them. But it was too minor a work to...work.
I recall Hitchcock toying with the press while promoting The Birds. He suggested that he used grapes as eyeballs to film scenes of people getting pecked in the eyes. There are no such scenes in The Birds -- though that one dead farmer certainly HAD his eyes pecked out. But we don't see it happen in real time...
I noticed that, and I remembered that, two years later with his "War of the Worlds," Spielberg would use the same gimmick - hand held video on the ground, etc.
I remembered that too. Spielberg just gives us the camera still recording on the ground, i.e., he doesn't waste time giving us the camera's POV before that. Overall, again, the director really does matter - that whole opening half an hour (up to Tom Cruise & family hitting the highway) of WOTW is pretty great and well-designed both visually & aurally. My memory from seeing it in a theater is that the sound design was particularly unnerving, Hitchcock-worthy. The Core doesn't have the level of intention and care a Spielberg or a Hitchcock brings.
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