750 word analysis

 The birds (1963):  

 In the beginning there was match on action as you see the car from one angle and then you see it again but from a different angle. The singing of the children is diegetic sound as it's actually happening in the film sequence. There's a tracking shot and a POV shot.  The cut between the shots of the woman and the birds creates suspense as every time the camera switches back to the birds, the number of  birds increase and by the end of the video sequence there is a massive increase in the amount of birds seen. This is unexpected. There's a sound bridge of the children singing in the background as you can't see them singing but it is still going on. Every time the camera switches to the woman it gets closer and so this is an extreme close up. This is dramatic irony as we know that there are birds behind her that increase over time however she is oblivious to the birds behind her until she notices one in the air flying around. This realisation leads her to follow the bird to the rest of the flock. The woman looks on edge as she keeps frantically turning around to check her surroundings to make sure no one is watching her. It is clear that she is stressed due to her facial expressions whilst she is smoking a cigarette. The woman repeatedly glares into the distance and sighs suggesting a sense of disappointment or hopelessness The woman notices a bird flying around and so she decides to follow it. This is an example of a POV shot. This is because we see the bird flying through the eyes of the woman instead of from a different angle. Once the woman realises the flock of birds that have been behind her this entire time she is filled with shock. This is seen through the way the woman's face drops and she is practically left speechless.This leads the woman to slowly remove herself from her current surroundings. The use of the Tracking Shot

emphasises how frightened the woman is as she is using the uttermost caution to leave the area, its as if she does not want to alert the birds of her departure.As soon as the woman reaches the safety of the stairs and is certain she is out of the view of the flock of the birds we see the true extent of her discomfort. This is evident in the way the woman ran up the stairs and opened the door. The way in which the woman did this suggest a sense of urgency as though she was trying to escape from a threat or something harmful. There is another match on action scene when the woman is walking towards the bench and when the woman sits down onto the bench as it all looks like one combined shot. The black crows are a symbolic representation of death in the future which could foreshadow impending danger for the woman. This is successfully reinforced by the fast camera panning which connotes the frantic nature of her mind in this stressful situation. The children singing could be seen as contrapuntal sound as children are seen as pure and innocent and so it doesn't go with this situation as crows are a symbol of death. However, the children singing could also be parallel sound as singing children are typically found in horror movies and so it matches the image of the peculiar crows. The crescendo of the singing children demonstrates the rising tension between the woman and the black crows, as the volume builds the black crows accumulate into a murder of crows which perfectly matches the theme of horror. The repetition of the children singing can be said to be seen as some sort of hypnosis aimed towards the woman. Towards the end of this sequence, we are made aware of the severity of the woman's fear through the noticeable increase of sound in the woman's footsteps. There is a shot reverse shot between the woman and the crows. The surroundings could be seen to mirror the woman's feelings of emptiness and loneliness as she is on her own only surrounded by nature and the murder of crows. This sequence has been edited in a way to make the audience misinterpret the location of the scene. This is shown through the fact that the woman walked through the same door she entered in, in the start, and yet her car was missing and the name of the school was cut out making us think that she was in a different location when in fact the location hadn't changed.