hitchcock party — chapter 1
house of hitchcock
We set out to turn the house into a little Hitchcock world. Birds in the trees, shadows where there shouldn't be shadows, a window worth looking into, and a motel sign that took things a little too far.
We spent weeks putting it together, which is a rather elaborate way of asking friends over for dinner.
But that's part of the fun. You make something, share it, and watch people discover it. Eventually, the food comes out, the conversations take over, and all that strange preparation has somewhere to go.
The decorations will come down. The props will find their way into storage. But for one evening, the house became something else.
leave something to discover
field notes
01 — the birds
You can't do Hitchcock without the birds. We put them in the trees and let their shadows do some of the work. In the film, even the sound matters: The Birds famously uses manipulated bird sounds instead of a conventional musical score. We took a slightly less subtle approach.
A little nod to Psycho. the glowing sign does most of the work. sometimes all you need is a lonely motel, a dark night, and the feeling that you probably should have kept driving.
02 — bates motel
In Hitchcock's Rear Window, a photographer watches his neighbors through binoculars and starts to suspect something terrible is happening. The film's enormous courtyard set contained 31 apartments, 12 of them fully furnished. Ours is a little smaller, and the neighbors are getting up to rather different things.
03 — rear window
watch