Books &repeated posts &Story & Storyboards 24 Jul 2013 08:54 am
N by NW – rerouted
- Thanks to the site 1000 Frames of Hitchcock (and thanks to Mark Mayerson for leading us there) we can view a frame by frame analysis of Hitchcock’s works. This is essential for any film lover or storyboard designer. These films are the masterworks and our foundation.
North By Northwest features one of the most studied film sequences of all time. By going to the photo-site, you can truly look at how the scenes break down into their montage.
This encouraged me to put up the boards I have from a book entitled Hitchcock’s Notebooks by Dan Auiler. Auiler says that once Alfred Hitchcock completed the script with Ernest Lehman, they handed this sequence to storyboard artist Mentor Huebner and gave him free reign to do as he thought fit. If you study the photos from the film, on the new site, you’ll see that one doesn’t exactly duplicate the other. I caught a mispublication in that some of the drawings were printed out of order in the book. Regardless, certainly the mood of the sequence is here, and the cutting style is established.
This is Huebner’s board:
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____(Click any image to enlarge.)
on 24 Jul 2013 at 9:23 am 1.Pierre said …
It’s remarkable how closely Hitchcock stuck to the storyboard. The filmed version is a near-perfect recreation of the drawn storyboard, right down to Cary Grant’s expressions and body language.
I’d love to know how Hitchcock worked with his storyboard artists to create such a detailed sequence. Did Hitchcock let Heubner loose to create the sequence? Did the scripts actually lay out the individual shots that Hitchcock have in mind? These are all interesting questions.
Storyboards like this also point out how collaborative the film-making process truly is. As much as I agree with the idea of a film-making “auteur”, in truth it’s the combination of so many talents that create the finished film.
Thanks for sharing these and I’ll certainly look out for the Auiler book as well as the 1000 Frames website.
on 25 Jul 2013 at 1:03 pm 2.the Gee said …
I thought I read some where that Hitchcock himself did storyboards for his films.
Okay. I just did a quick search. Since every time I try to post a comment with a link in it, the comment never goes through, I am just going to suggest searching for Hitchcock Storyboards 13 Classic Films.