For the class on 4-18-2007

“Vertigo” was set up to be a MacGuffin, it just was. After seeing the film, I could fully understand what Professor Campbell meant when he used this term. Right from the beginning of the film Det. John ‘Scottie’ Ferguson (James Stewart) begins watching Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak), who is staring at a the “Portrait of Carlotta,” and he becomes intrigued by this piece of art. So he starts asking about it and learns more, while viewers are taking on for the ride. Movies are usually set up to have viewers follow one protagonistic character within, usually, a small group of people. Well, Scottie is exactly that, and he is thrown off in this direction by Elster’s; they’re playing a MacGuffin on him. He then, in turn, plays a MacGuffin on us, as viewers. But the one who started the whole ordeal ends up losing.

It’s an endless cycle, spiraling around just like the image in that woman’s eye through the introduction.

I don’t know if I would have followed the MacGuffin or not, because before I saw the movie I already had a pre-existing knowledge of the real focus of the film and of what a MacGuffin can do.

I found this site which has a ton of commercials for many different things, but each one of the videos are MacGuffins. Then I remember something. I made a MacGuffin commercial in high school. I was in a Computer Art class and one big project that spanned across the entire year was the creation of our own individual art museums (not a real one of course). We had to draw up blueprints for it, pick actual works of art that we would put in there and we give information on them as well. I think we also had to make a website for the museums as well. At the end the final piece was a commercial of some sort that would promote our fictional art galleries. We had a video camera, but I chose to make an animation on the computer. Basically, I had a guy jump out of a flying airplane (while he was falling, I switched to first person view so you could see him getting closer and closer to the museum), fall through a tube on top of a building (which was the art museum), he rides through the tube going deeper into the building, shoots out of the cylinder within the art gallery, he’s flying through the air, passing other works of art, and his head pops through the Mona Lisa, replacing her head with his. Then I wrote something like “Joey’s Art Museum” – (the slide changes) – “Drop in any time.”

I was really cool. But I thought that was what would sell. Give viewers a little something extra causing them do actually remember the commercial later on to tell to their friends. I didn’t say what the building was or what was in it or anything for that matter; my MacGuffin was just a guy falling through the air and into a building. The same type of thing happens in movies, and it is, indeed, working within “Vertigo.”

I didn’t even know there was a true name for it what I, or Hitchcock, were doing. I feel where he’s from from, though; not making any money off of it. I was given a low B on the assignment for not advertising my museum very well.