This called for intense preparation, which was
another part of Hitchcock's filmmaking style Van Sant
wound up channeling. Hitchcock once said that he
felt that 95% of the work on a motion picture should
be completed before the cast hit the soundstage. The
director meticulously planned each and every shot to
the point where the entire movie had been played
out, sans actor's ad libs, in his head long before
production began.
Now Van Sant was faced with a similar task. He
carefully reviewed and timed out each scene of the original Psycho on a DVD
player to keep in perfect sync. "It was painstaking but it had its own rewards and
fascination," says Van Sant of the process. "In a couple of scenes, we went
completely off the original page and made our own editorial interpretation. But 95%
of everything was shot according to the original."
He continues: "I was very much of the opinion that the original worked and that
the only thing that should change was adding color and updating the characters.
The characterizations are obviously different because it's different people playing
the roles, and the lighting is different because we're using a different type of film.
But I wanted to keep the timing and blocking as close as possible. I figured if we
have everything else close to the original, then we could begin to play around a
little bit."
Van Sant did change the opening shot from the original-but in keeping with
Hitchcock's original desires, Hitchcock had wanted to achieve the shot-of a cheap
motel in Phoenix-via a helicopter flying through the city streets. At the time, the
technology for helicopter shots was newly invented, and the scene didn't come
off. But Van Sant had the opportunity to go back and recreate it according to
Hitchcock's vision.
"Today, this sort of a shot is pretty common. So we just did what they had been
planning to do in 1960. Our shot is a really nice shot," says Van Sant. "It's very
sort of peaceful and dreamy."
Ironically, Hitchcock's own inventive use of film technology, including such
techniques as rear-screen projection and the use of matte photography, were so
ahead of their time that Van Sant found it was a constant challenge to reproduce
some of Psycho's most perfectly rendered shots. Notes Van Sant: "Hitchcock was
ground-breaking enough to manipulate the technology to carry off shots in his
day that are still difficult and expensive for us today."
Although digital effects have largely usurped
traditional rear-screen projection in today's features,
Van Sant used the technique for the early driving
sequences just as Hitchcock had-but he used the
very latest in rear-screen technology, employing
state-of-the art projectors and special camera mounts
for the plate photography that would later be used as
backgrounds to the action.
For the most part the filmmakers stuck to technology
that was available in Hitchcock's day but some digital
effects were employed. Once again, however, there was a strong link to the past.
Van Sant used the visual effects company Illusion Arts working with artists who
had apprenticed to Albert Whitlock, who was Hitchcock's most respected optical
effects advisor.
Says Dany Wolf: "Whenever possible, we attempted to mimic techniques used by
Hitchcock but we also used more current technology when we thought it would
have a better result, more in keeping with the original intent. The film is really a mix
of the old and the new."
The one high-tech tool that Hitchcock did not use for Psycho was color for fear
that the more true-to-life blood would be shot down by the censors of the time. Yet
he was renowned for his perfectionist approach to color, carefully choosing every
nuance and shading in such classic psychological thrillers as Vertigo. Van Sant
and his technical crew wanted to bring a similar attention to color as they
introduced new hues into the once starkly gray-scale world of the Bates Motel.
Explains director of photography Chris Doyle: "There was a strong collaboration
between myself, the production designer and the costume designer in every
choice. The texture of the image was a very important priority."
"The use of color was probably one of our greatest challenges," adds production
designer Tom Foden, "translating a black and white film into a contemporary color
film. We decided at one point that green was probably the Psycho color. We've
created a theme in a way that color runs through the movie. It starts off with a
fairly de-saturated image with simpler colors and as we get into the Bates house
and the motel, the colors become more vibrant, more complex. Then towards the
end we come away from the rich colorful image and move back into a slightly
de-saturated one."
When it came to locations, the filmmakers once again followed in the original film's
footsteps. Hitchcock preferred to shoot on lots and stages-where he could control
every element and detail of design-rather than on more chaotic locations. Some
98% of the original Psycho was shot on the Universal Studios backlot as well as at
Universal's Revue Studios and Van Sant embraced a similar approach.
At first, the crew hoped to shoot the original Bates Motel and accompanying
residence as built for Hitchcock, but this proved logistically impossible. Explains
Dany Wolf: "The house and motel had been moved several times for the Universal
Studios Tour and when we went to scout it at the start of production, the
positioning was all wrong. We did a whole analysis with reference photos from the
original film and it was just not going to work."
Thus, Van Sant and company did exactly what the original filmmakers of Psycho
did in 1960-they erected their own house on the lot, reinterpreting the somewhat
Gothic Victorian into a more present-day facade to loom over the infamous and
freshly painted original Bates Motel. "The positioning is now true to the original
film, but it is a new Bates house, an original and very special house," says Wolf. In
addition to refurbishing the original Bates Motel, the production worked on
Universal stages 12, 20, 22, as well as the lot's Colonial Street and New York Street.
Breaking from tradition, they also utilized a few locations, most notably traveling to
Gorman, California to shoot the eerie "swamp" scenes with Norman Bates.
Hitchcock had used the Falls Lake area on the Universal backlot, but Falls Lake
has since become ubiquitous in motion pictures and had grown too large and
unwieldy for the stark swamp sequences. When the second unit crew happened
upon a muddy, mossy pond while shooting footage for the driving sequences in
Gorman, they knew they had found the perfect murky terrain to match the mood of
the scene.
When it came to the sets, the production used Hitchcock's original floor plans but
updated styles and furnishings for modern day audiences. Signature props like
Norman's birds of prey and the disturbing details of his mother's room were kept
intact. "Even though we made every attempt to stay as close to the original as
possible, it is also contemporary in style," explains Tom Foden. "There are quite a
few visual references that are not identical reproductions but hark back to the
original."
Another element of the recreated Psycho that harks reverently back to the original
is the score. Bernard Hermann's dissonant and discordant all strings score for the
original film is considered by many to be his greatest masterpiece, the veritable
"grandfather" of the modern suspense soundtrack. Indeed, the screaming,
slashing strings that accompany Psycho's shower sequence may very well be the
most famous and most recognized musical strains of all of cinema. Hermann's was
the music of obsession, passion and foreboding: a perfect match for the themes of
Alfred Hitchcock. The filmmakers obviously wanted to keep the score intact-with
all its evocations of rage, anxiety and intense apprehension-the old score was not
going to fit perfectly with the different scene lengths of the re-creation and the
quality was not going to hold up to modern stereophonic standards.
Enter Danny Elfman, who himself became a composer for motion pictures due to his
love of Bernard Hermann's dark musical vision, and Steve Bartak. Elfman and
Bartak were brought in by the filmmakers to adapt Hermann's classic
palpitation-inducing score for the new version. The duo worked with an orchestra
twice the size of Hitchcock's original: a dramatic 72-piece entirely string orchestra.
Explains Elfman: "I attempted to do a respectful re-creation while acknowledging
the fact that it is a different movie and no scene is exactly the same length as the
original. A large portion of the cues won't even be a note different, they're just
going to be re-scored. A smaller portion of the music will be jostled, shifted,
stretched or abbreviated, but in a way that stays very much true to the original."
In addition to matching Hermann's themes to the new scenes, Elfman was
responsible for producing the music. His intention was to keep the pulsing,
percussive energy of the original while maintaining a thoroughly modern sound.
"My approach was contemporary and retro as the same time," Elfman explains. "I
used close miking to recreate the presence and energy of the original but it's still a
contemporary stereophonic recording."
He adds: "I just tried to make exactly what Hermann wrote as effective as possible.
The last thing I wanted was Bernard Hermann's ghost visiting me in the middle of
the night.
Just as Elfman and Bartak were brought in to re-record the score, leading title
designer Pablo Ferro-known for his extensive work with Stanley Kubrick-was
brought in to adapt the original film's legendary title sequence. Hitchcock's titles
were created by master title designer Saul Bass. Bass was an innovator who, like
Hermann, worked repeatedly with Hitchcock. His credit sequences were mini-films
in their own right, powerfully setting the haunting mood, imagery and theme for
the film.
Ferro was given the task of bringing Bass' striking concept for the titles into that
state-of-the-art for title design.
Perhaps the most obsessively worrisome recreation of the whole production was
that of the fateful shower in Marion Crane's motel bathroom. The desire to do the
suspense right at times outweighed the desire to do it as an exact carbon copy.
Comments Dany Wolf: "We were very fortunate on this film to have Chris Doyle,
who is a masterful cinematographer. Teaming up Chris with Gus Van Sant means
that no matter how faithful they wanted to be to the original, they couldn't help but
push the envelope and experiment. The shower sequence is very shocking and
graphic like the original, but it isn't an exact replica."
Yet, the nuances and details so important to Hitchcock are all there. "We played
around with different color tiles, we enlarged the shower head slightly in size to
accommodate the camera but for the most part, we were faithful to the original
set-up. On the other hand we did find a great new shower head," comments Tom
Foden.
Of course, it is what happens under that shower head-and the scenes that
follow-that make Psycho the riveting and unraveling experience that has been for
38 years. Van Sant wanted the power of those moments-the manner in which
suspense is created, sustained and made almost unbearable-to be as authentic as
possible, but also to be as visceral and exciting as Hitchcock himself would have
required.
Throughout it all-as media controversy raged, and as the filmmakers struggled to
do everything just so-there was also the risk that cast and crew would take the
re-creation too seriously, a taboo Van Sant rejected from the beginning. All were
reminded of what Hitchcock himself once said about his main mission in
movie-making: "to simply scare the hell out of people."