Vertigo The GooFilm

The term, “a swede” was created by the character Jerry (Joe Black) in the movie, Be Kind, Rewind, describing a home-made movie produced with whatever is handy and cheap to tell an existing film’s plotline in less than a minute. The main goal is to have fun when you make it.

I had just watched the movie Vertigo When Hitchcock visited the San Francisco area, he liked it so much that he decided to make a movie using it as a backdrop. The first time I watched Vertigo, I remember thinking it was a documentary about San Francisco and the story was just an excuse to make the film.

What I had that was handy and cheap was my laptop, software and the internet to research, design and produce. It was easy, fast and fun. I used Google Earth and/or Google maps for different research. Google Earth allowed me to recreate the important scenery in the movie. The only important set I could not reproduce was the San Luis Bautista mission tower, which was created for the movie and which I then did myself, using a tool from this Google universe to recreate it in 3D.

After the storyboard was made with comparative shots form the Vertigo movie and Google Earth panoramas, I had to “cast” the characters. I realized I had a fedora (similar to the main character’s hat) and my wife had a classy hat with a “necklace” to represent the second main character. Once all my shots were edited, I animated the characters in Final Cut Pro.

This resulted in a very rough animation. As Hitchcock did in the movie, I used the characters and their story as an excuse to show the background from Google Earth. The overall feeling of Vertigo was a beautiful landscape haunted by two characters.

Enjoy!