Cinema 4D previs and The Birds

I've been spending a lot of time previsualizing the bird attack sequence using CInema 4D. It's proving to be a great tool. It feels a lot like word processing for film and I've been trying out all sorts of alternatives.

Watched Hitchcock's The Birds to get ideas for the bird attack sequence. I'm not much of a Hitchcock fan, but it was worth a try. It's an odd film that doesn't date well in many ways. When we were in elementary school, all the kids would try to stay up late to watch this on the late show after the 10:00 news. I remember thinking it was scary--not super scary but scary enough. I don't think it would even scare Sean today. ("Are those pretend birds daddy?").

I don't know anything about its visual effects but the makers seemed to use a kind of blue-screening or matting process to get a lot of the bird effects. Plus there are a lot of superimpositions. Laughable: the animatronic birds. One of them looks like those elves at Christmas time bobbing up and down as it attacks a kid. Also funny: the Tippi Hedren look right, cut, look center, cut, look left sequence.

There are some interesting sequences where they cut directly from outdoor location to studio. I guess this sort of thing didn't stand out much in those days. Certainly not on our 12" black and white TV anyway. The entire film has a hodge podge look, like it was collaged together out of different pieces and places. I wonder if this is what the current crop of visual effects films will look like in the future?

For help in setting up bird attack scenes: F. For seeing Tippi Hedren look flawless while battling birds: A+.