Marat's Thoughts

      I enjoyed Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock! I thought that the cinematography was super interesting, in the beginning of the film I expected to be bored sitting in the apartment for the entire film, but Hitchcock made it interesting throughout his story. I thought the murder mystery was elevated nicely by the tension from the window itself, and our very limited perspective of the events occurring. The window keeps the viewer even more oblivious to the outside world than Jeffries is, and the only things we know about it are what we hear from him, his aid, or Lisa. We have to make our own inferences about what is going on in the other apartments when Jeffries looks at them. Personally, I didn't think there really was a murder that happened until most of the way through the film. The detective Tom Doyle kept coming over and saying things that didn't totally disprove the murder, but I thought after a while that maybe Jeffries really was just projecting or making things u...

      The main difference that stuck out to me after watching both of these relatively short films, was the camera movement in Snowy. Zooms in and out, shifts in focus, the drone shot, etc. Even when the camera was being held by someone and it shook a little bit with their hand movement, I noticed that immediately because normally it kind of bothers me when the camera shakes. But after watching The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with a completely unmoving camera that usually cut between shots with walls of text, it was nice to have a camera that felt physically real again. I enjoyed every closeup shot of Snowy and it was refreshing to see him switching in and out of focus in the grass scene.     This got me thinking a little bit about how far production and camera setups have come in the movie industry. I'm always in awe when I see a set photo of one of those giant RED camera rigs, or when there's a driving or aerial scene and the camera follows some fast-paced action....