Opening minutes of psycho

 How the Opening Minutes of Psycho (1960) Use Mise En Scene, Camera Angles, and Lighting to Create a Typical Thriller Setting

Alfred Hitchcock uses camera angles and certain techniques to create tension and a sense of suspense in the opening to his 1960 film Psycho. The first clip from the film is a panning shot, turning and then zooming slowly towards a window of a flat. The use of the panning is very effective because it shows the vast, wide city landscape. However, when the camera begins to zoom towards the window, the confined shot makes the rest of the city feel blank and empty. Because the window is the subject of this scene, it intrigues the audience and makes the mystery of what’s inside the room even greater. The effects this scene has on the audience is common in the Thriller genre. 

The next shot is of a female character, Marian; with a young man she has meant to be sleeping with. The first shot shown of our female character is of her lying on a bed, with the young man standing beside her, his head cut out of the shot. The way Marian is lying on the bed makes her seem more vulnerable and fragile, mainly because of the man standing above her, looking very masculine. The two characters then have a conversation, and the audience find out that they are having some sort of affair. Straight away, I can tell that Marian is not as fragile and pure as I first thought. Normally in the Thriller genre, the people that do wrong during the film are the ones that get the chop. This tells me that our female character is probably going to die at some point in the film.

The scene after this shows Marian packing to go somewhere, but constantly looking at money that is in an open envelope. The Mise En Scene of the envelope and money adds mystery to the plot and to Marian as a character. Every next shot in this scene shows our female character looking back and the money, reinforcing my point on mystery. Eventually Marian sits beside the open envelope that is overflowing with dollar bills, and puts it in her handbag, leaving swiftly after. The way she puts the money inside her bag suggests that she in a hurry to leave her room. This reinforces the sense of mystery that is often associated with the thriller genre.

Scene four is of Marian in a car as she is driving in the dark. This darkness shows connotations of evil and a foreshadowing of a bad event that is going to take place. The weather starts getting really bad and begins to rain. This use of pathetic fallacy also might show that bad things are about to happen. Like the previous scene, the shots keep on coming back to one another, this time of Marian's perspective as she is driving, and then to her face. Every time the camera comes back to Marian, it gets slightly closer to her face, showing more detail in her facial features.