From the course: Creating a Short Film: 05 Directing
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Using motifs
From the course: Creating a Short Film: 05 Directing
Using motifs
- Related to themes is the idea of using a motif. Often these terms are used interchangeably, but technically a theme is a repeated idea, whereas a motif is usually a repeated element. A motif might come in the form of a color, image, editing style, or something else. One of my favorite motifs in cinema is the way Alfred Hitchcock used division to symbolize psychosis in Psycho. The film starts off with Marion Crane who just stole a bunch of money from the company that she works for, now she's our protagonist thus far, but Hitchcock encourages us as the audience to oscillate between identifying with her, and thinking that she's kinda slimy, and thus the theme of psychosis is already introduced, and so Hitchcock introduces the motif of mirrors, and why would he angle the camera like this? It's to reinforce this idea of a split personality, of two sides of the same person. When Norman Bates is cleaning up the murder scene we see him reflected in the mirror, we see it again even more…
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