Some Interesting Production Notes On ‘The Birds’ from Alfred Hirchcock

Just for fun, here are some interesting production notes on ‘The Birds’ from Alfred Hitchcok who’s shown here with the stars…the birds. Also shown, Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Jesica Tandy and Veronica Cartwright.

To keep the birds from flying around and on the ground, they were fed a heavy grain and whiskey mix.

The use of standard blue screen techniques for doing matte shots of the birds proved to be unacceptable. The rapid movement of the birds, especially their wings, caused excessive blue fringing in the shots. It was determined that the sodium vapor process could be used to do the composites. The only studio in America that was equipped for this process was the Walt Disney studio. Ub Iwerks, who had become the world’s leading expert on the sodium vapor process, was assigned to this production.

In the scene where Tippi Hedren is running and continually attacked, the birds were actually attached to her coat with nylon thread and were flapping to get loose. Very convincing.

There was no musical score for the film except for the sounds created on the Mixtrautonium, an early electronic musical instrument similar to a Moog.

To make the sound of the birds attacks more frighting, reel to reel tapes of the angry birds was played backward in the mix.

Finally, one ending never shot was a scene showing the Golden Gate bridge covered with birds. That would have been powerful!

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