Casting a Shadow

The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art’s exhibition, Casting a Shadow: Creating the Alfred Hitchcock Film revealed the collaboration behind what viewers know as “an Alfred Hitchcock Film.” Through films, drawings, painting, storyboards, and other production documents, the exhibition explored a film making process that thrived on teamwork.

For the exhibition NUAMPS produced a Flash-based kiosk program that allows visitors to view final film sequences from Lifeboat alongside the original storyboards, many of which bare the handwriting of Hitchcock himself. The kiosk displayed two sequences, the film’s opening scene, in which the camera portrays a shipwreck by investigating the wreckage and scattered belongings of those who were on board, and a storm sequence which elaborately choreographs actors’ performances with an onslaught of lifeboat-threatening waves.

Casting a Shadow ran at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, September 28  through December 9, 2007.