Psycho (1960) Shot analysis (1)

In this shot, Norman is dressed as his mother and is about to stab Marion. He is back lit and in silhouette to create suspense because we do not know who the killer is at this point. This shot is taken with a handheld camera, which then goes to very fast paced montage of shots which include some point of view shots and close ups, so you can see the emotion on Marion’s face.

Because Norman is dressed up as his mother, this gives the audience the stereotypical horror ideology of being outside the CDI, because what Norman does is obviously not normal. This also relates to the historical context of the film because in 1957 Ed Gein had been arrested after murdering lots of people, dressed as his mother. This scene illustrates the importance of genre theory as written by Thomas Schatz’s “Hollywood Genres” because it has lots of horror conventions in it, but it also shows the important of Janet Staiger’s “Audience Studies” theory in that the references to Ed Gein would have made the film even more powerful in 1960.

Psycho (1960) Shot Analysis (2)

In this scene Marion is undressing and Norman is watching her through a spyhole. This is Norman being a voyeur, meaning that he can see her, but she can’t see him. This could reflect Hitchcock’s auteur style because he was somewhat of a voyeur in real life, and the Upcoming movie Hitchcock explores his obsession with blonde stars. The low key lighting also connotes that Norman is evil and dark. Furthermore there is light coming from Marion’s room, which connotes that even though Marion has stolen the money she is still a good character, which is then proven because she decides to give the money back. Just after this shot we get a POV shot from Norman, and we see Marion undressing and this makes the audience feel uneasy because it is outside of the CDI. We don’t actually see Marion naked, because at the time censorship was very strict with the Hays Code, Marion could only be shown taking her shirt off instead of her bra, but it is still uncomfortable us to see through the eyes of a seedy voyeur.

Psycho (1960) Shot analysis (3)

In this scene Norman has invited Marion back into his office. Norman tells Marion is a taxidermist, and we are shown the stuffed birds in the background. This could connote that Marion is going to be ‘stuffed’ by Norman, which we find out later on to be true.

The Stuffed bird in the top left of the shot is an owl, which is a bird of prey. The shot is a low angle expressionist shot, possibly connoting that Norman is the bird of prey and Marion the prey.

This also leads to the conclusion that Norman is a misogynist because we assume that he has killed other women. The birds also relate to Ed Gein, but in a more sanitised way, because Ed Gein collected bones and body parts from corpses and made furniture from them.

Yet we also feel sorry for Norman here because it seems he has invited Marion in so he can have a friendly chat with her, because he has been isolated and feels like he is outside the CDI. There is a slight hint that Norman is insane because when Marion ask if his mother could be put away, Norman is offended and starts ranting about asylums. He says ‘they clack their thick tongues’, and becomes very angry at the thought of his mother being insane.

Dawn of the Dead (1979) Shot analysis (1)

In this scene Fran has just had sex with Flyboy (Steven). We can see from their facial expressions that they are incredibly fed up of what they are doing at the moment. This relates to Fran feeling that they are trapped in the mall (shown when she says shortly after this scene: “Can’t you see we’re prisoners here?”) and that they are zombies wandering the mall like they would in their everyday lives, because they are consumerist. Fran and Flyboy are zombies in their own way, because they have gotten into a routine of their own, and have become slaves to consumerism and greed.
Fran is also shown very differently in this scene in comparison to the other scene when she is putting make-up on. Just before this scene, she is putting make-up on we also get shots of mannequins, which is Romero comparing Fran to the mannequins, saying that she is not really living.
This reflects George. A. Romero’s “auteur” style (the concept that directors put their ideologies into their films which was written about by Andrew Sarris in “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962”) in which he puts in issues of the zeitgeist Into many of his films.

Dawn of the Dead (1979) Shot analysis (2)

In this scene Special Forces are moving into Puerto Rican people’s houses and killing zombies. The team member called ‘Wooley’ goes out of control, and starts shooting everybody. This is because he is racist, and does not care what happens to these people.
We can see one of the civilians head exploding from Wooley’s shotgun blast. This reflects Romero’s auteur style, because he is part-Cuban and does not like racism. Back when the film was released this would have shocked a lot of people, because up until then there had not been much body horror in films. When we watch this part of the film again in current times, modern audiences are not particularly shocked because we have become desensitised and have seen lots more gore effects. This scene also reflects the auteur style of Tom Savini because he uses very gory effects, that look very realistic. The effects are influenced by Tom’s experience in the Vietnam war, and he wanted to get across how horrible violence and death is.

Dawn of the Dead (1979) Shot analysis (3)

In this scene Peter is getting attacked by a zombie and Flyboy tries to shoot it and misses a couple of times. Roger then steps up, aims at the zombie and kills it with a headshot. We assume Flyboy is going to be the stereotypical male hero as he is a white TV reporter, but Romero twists it a little bit by making him quite useless. In comparison to Flyboy, the main zombie character in Land of the Dead (2005) is black and we end up feeling sympathetic towards him, which is again twisting the what you would expect.

Flyboy carries a phallic rifle to show that he has a large amount of power, but then goes on to miss the zombie. So Roger intervenes and steals the power with his phallic rifle, making Flyboy powerless and emasculated. Previous to Flyboy trying to shoot the zombie, Fran and Flyboy are attacked by zombies and Flyboy has an opportunity to be a hero, but he just misses with his swinging hammer and falls clumsily onto it.