Miggs
Well-Known Member
I mean, do you know what the Hitchcock term McGuffin is? they often use those type of low angle shots to build to the mystery of the object, like when Vincent Vega is inspecting the contents of the briefcase...
^literally the first image on google when u search McGuffin...
Also in Psycho look how Hitchcock uses the low angle shots on and inside the house behind the hotel.. there's a mystery/suspense building element..
Here is Kubrick using a low angle shot not to demonstrate power or fear, but more as a suspense building element, to demonstrate how vulnerable young danny is.
The real reason you do it is to basically eliminate depth, makes it seem like you have more of a 2 dimensional space and this draws more attention to the lines the weights and the tones.
In the old Japanese masters movies, they used those angles to sort of simulate eye level if you were kneeling in their house as you would traditionally (and because of what I wrote in the sentence directly above)
Yes I do, I actually had a Hitchcock class in college and have probably seen over 20 of his films.
That said, you originally said horror/mystery. Horror is a poor word choice. I think in general the shot offers a sense of vulnerability that, depending on the scene and surrounding elements, can lend itself to mystery, suspense or superiority/inferiority but in general the latter is virtually always present.
