Rebecca

November 2020

Movie Trailer

Project Overview

This movie trailer was created in memory of Alfred Hitchcock’s film Rebecca.This suspense film released 80 years ago is a classic in many people’s minds. Due to the limitation of computer technology, the movie trailer produced for Rebecca in 1940 seems boring and vague now. However, we can still see the classic Alfred Hitchcock movie style from the movie trailer of 1940, that is, he would not reveal any plot of the movie in the movie trailer.

Alfred Hitchcock likes to let the audience discover important plots when they watch the climax of the movie, so I also followed this point when I adapted Rebecca’s movie trailer. The background music, the color of the screen and the choice of font are all to match the style of movie trailer released in early 1940. This is also an assignment of MOME709, which takes about 3 weeks to make.

The assignment was to adapt the opening title of a movie, not to remake it, so I used some of the 1940 version.

Survey

Rebecca is a 1940 American romantic psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The film is a gothic story shot in black and white.Maxim de Winter’s first wife, Rebecca, died before the events of the film, but was never seen. However, her reputation and memory of her remained constant in the life of Maxim, his new wife and housekeeper Mrs. Danvers.

Rebecca was released in theaters on April 12, 1940, and was a major commercial success. It received 11 nominations at the 13th Academy Awards, more than any other film of the year.It won two awards;Best Picture and Best Cinematography, becoming the only Hitchcock film to win a pre-award.

In 2018, the film was selected for preservation in the US National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

Concept

You can see this is the opening sequence of the film Rebecca from 1940. As I said before, due to technical limitations, it was impossible in 1940 to make clear and smooth film openings. But we can still take away some important information from the opening credits: First, Hitchcock continued his habit of not giving away the plot of his films in the opening credits, so the scene in the opening credits was all trees. Second, the opening credits are intended to convey a dark and low feeling to the audience. Let the audience understand the overall tone of the film is a suspense film. I thought that since I was going to adapt the opening title of the film, I needed to continue the above points. If the 1940 version had been stripped of all its features, the opening title would have lost its Hitchcock feel, and that’s not what I wanted.

So I chose to continue with the opening titles of Hitchcock’s movies, but I wanted to improve them. I think it is appropriate to include some scenes or characters in the opening credits, which will not tell the audience the specific plot of the movie or the direction of the movie. On the contrary, it will attract the audience’s attention more and make them want to see the film more. So I used some silhouettes of churches, oceans and women in the opening credits to replace the monotonous trees in the 1940 version. At the same time, I used the black and white style from Rebecca. I tried the color version, but I don’t think it’s a good example of a suspense film.

Moodboard

Typography

Because the video is the opening of a film or documentary, the name and title of the producer should appear in the video. About the choice of font and font color, my ideas have the following points: First, the text needs to have a retro and slightly more complex line feel. Typography can’t be modern. Second, words need to be secondary in the film, neither ignored nor the first target. Based on these requirements, I found this font as the basis for the text in my video. At the same time, I used a dark color text and a white text background in the video. And I made the text size smaller. I think the contrast of the colors and the small size of the text will match the points I made above.

Shooting Process

I returned to China in 2020 because of the epidemic. There is no place in my city that is similar to Rebecca’s scene. For example, the old architecture of European and American style or the ocean, so I came to Qingdao, a beautiful old seaside city with a long history. I found a villa in Qingdao that once belonged to Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Nationalist Government, and used it as my shooting location. At the same time, this villa is built by the sea, and I also found the seaside cliffs similar to those in Rebecca. If you have a chance to come to China, you can consider visiting Qingdao.

Final Scenes