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Marnie

“Marnie” by aforgrave, on Flickr

From HItchcock‘s 1964 film of the same name. Here, Marnie (played by Tippi Hedren) waits quietly in the washroom stall at work at the end of the day while waiting for everyone else to leave. The camera focuses on her for the duration of the scene, while she listens and waits to hear the other ladies finish their small talk and leave for home. Once all is quiet, she then re-enters the office to burgle the safe.

Over the course of the film, her husband (played by Sean Connery) continues to rescue her from prosecution, and seeks to uncover the mystery behind her compulsive behaviours.

The lighting and framing in this shot is wonderful, emphasizing how isolated and removed Marnie is from everyone. Given that there is virtually no movement for the duration of this piece, aside from a shadow on the wall above Marnie’s head as someone enters, and then subsequently exits the stall behind her as the room empties, it makes for quite a tense shot.

Having been finalized close to the end of my GIFestivus2012 run (although I still have a few left to post), this one was one of the GIFs I was able to work on and apply what I’ve learned to make decisions as I went to move towards the finished product fairly quickly. Reduced from 152 frames down to six frames (with several repetitions), the GIF features a mask for all but the face (could have just gone with the eyes, but there is a bit of head movement and some face shadows), timing intervals ranging from 0 to 8 seconds, an overlay in the upper right (can you see it?) to deal with the aforementioned shadow on the rear wall, and at the full 256 colours, a comfortable 205 kb at 600 pixels wide. (Given that I was posting GIFs > 1GB to begin.)

I’m submitting this one as part of GIFestivus2012, for the ds106 Animated GIF Assignment 865: GIF Me Again About My Eyes.

More Hitchcock to come, though I’m still looking for a nice scary one for MBS’ Animated GIF Assignments891: Psycho GIF.