Scene Interpretation

I decided to watch Alfred Hitchcock's movie, Psycho. I had never seen this classic movie surprisingly and I really enjoyed watching it even though I am not a fan of horror or thriller movies.

Synopsis

Warning Spoilers!

Secretary Marion Crane steals $40,000 dollars from her employer in order to run away and marry her boyfriend who has hefty alimony to pay to his ex-wife and therefore cannot marry her. She steals this money and goes on the run traveling to California where her boyfriend lives She takes measures to hide like trading in her car for a different one and taking back roads to avoid the police. During a rain storm, she gets tired and pulls over to the Bates Motel where she meets owner Norman Bates. Marion can hear Norman and his mentally ill mother arguing when he goes to the house at the top of the hill. That night Marion is killed. When Marion is declared missing several people come looking for her including her lover sam her sister and a private investigator. One of them doesn't make it back alive either. In the end, it is discovered that Norman Bates is actually the mentally ill one. He had been impersonating his mother and killing out of jealousy for "her" son. Norman's mother is actually dead Norman killed her out of jealousy. Norman is eventually discovered and put into prison.

For my scene interpretation, I decided to choose the iconic shower scene. I actually had no idea that that scene was from this movie even though I had seen clips of it in the past. I chose this scene because it was my favorite shot sequence in the film.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0WtDmbr9xyY

Variation of Concept

I think that an interesting variation of not only this scene but the whole movie would be to follow it from Norman Bates's perspective fully. In the scenes leading up to the shower scene, what exactly was going through his mind, and what Norman Bates was doing before Marion arrived at his vacant motel?

In Norman Bate's everyday life I picture him sitting bored at this motel's front desk because nobody wants to come to his motel. He makes breakfast for his mother's decaying corpse

Norman Bates dresses up as his mother putting on the wing and getting dressed I picture his putting a lot of time into his appearance and using his mother's makeup so he can really take on the role of his mother when he murders.

When developing my storyboard concepts I decided to make my final variation a change of the first 20 or so minutes of the film. In the original first part of the movie, we follow Marion in her scheme to steal money from her boss and run away with her boyfriend. Then eventually she stumbles upon the Bates Motel. In my version, the first 20 minutes would just be Norman doing what he does every day to get ready to go to work after he goes to work is when it would be back to the original plot however the audience would have no background on why Marion is at the Bates Motel and it would already be aware of that Norman is a sick person.

I came up with this idea from viewing frame captures from the original movie so I decided to make my own.