The Art of Using Birds in Movie Titles

For ages, movie producers have tried to find new and innovative ways to make their movie a blockbuster. One common trend that has been observed most frequently in the past decade has been the use of birds in the titles of movies.

Some of the most successful and highly-acclaimed movies of all time have used birds in their title: Black Swan (2010), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), and Chicken Little (2004) to name a few.

There is speculation over when this trend started but most movie buffs agree that the first big movie that used a bird in its title was Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 thriller, The Birds. After The Birds's gigantic success, many movies followed in its path, but were forced to take circuitous methods of using bird names.

There are many ways you can go about using birds in your title. Some movie makers like to make movies about penguins and be very straightforward with their titles such as Penguins of Madagascar (2014) and March of the Penguins (2005) while others like to take trickier approaches such as Robin Hood (1973), Robin Hood (2010), and Black Hawk Down (2001).

Although these movies took the approach of adding a bird in the title while keeping birds out of the plot, nobody has done as good of a job at subliminally inserting a bird in a movie title than Michael Moore with his widely successful 2002 documentary Bowling for Columbine which cleverly inserted the word "owl" into the title.

We might never know if the fact that birds are in the titles of these movies are what made them successful but we can at least say with some certainty that the use of birds didn't hurt the films.

Requiem For a Dream

One director that uses sound as a key tool to telling his story is director Darren Aronofsky. He is known for using a dark tone to fill the nature of his stories. He has directed award winning films such as The Wrestler, and Black Swan, but my favorite of his is Requiem For a Dream. It redefined what a "drug movie" could be, illustrating a brutal addiction especially through the works of his chilling soundtrack and other sounds. I remember the first time I watched this horrifying film was in the 8th grade. My uncle told me it was a great film and had an incredible soundtrack so I was interested. And although I was terrified for 101 minutes, I couldn't stop thinking about how incredible the film was. Sound design is perhaps the most overlooked art in cinema, and for good reason: truly perfect sound serves only to enhance immersion in the film. Its not supposed to draw attention. But once you start paying attention, Requim's scenes are filled with subtle, striking enhancements. From the hallucinated growl of a characters fridge to the grating teeth-grinding of an addict on uppers. For a low budget film, Darren Aronofsky turned this film into something unforgettable.

Dominick Tavella

So I went to the Dominick Tavella presentation in Park last night. It was awesome. Mr. Tavella is a professional re-recording mixer. He is the last person the audio gets sent to and he completes the final mix. He has worked on huge films including the Black Swan and he won an academy award for his mixing in Chicago. Basically he was really awesome and he shared with us some insight into the world of mixing and the professional business. It was super interesting.