The Birds (story) The Birds (story) "The Birds" is a horror story by British writer Daphne du Maurier, first published in her 1952 collection "The Apple Tree". It is the story of a farmhand, his family, and his community that are attacked by flocks of birds and seabirds in "kamikaze" fashion. The story is set in du Maurier's native Cornwall shortly after the end of the Second World War. By the end of the story it becomes clear that all of Britain is under aerial assault. The story was the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's film "The Birds", released in 1963, the same year
The Birds (film) lit with narrow-spectrum sodium vapor lights. Unlike most compositing processes, SVP actually shoots two separate elements of the footage simultaneously using a beam-splitter. One reel is regular film stock and the other a film stock with emulsion sensitive only to the sodium vapor wavelength. This results in very precise matte shots compared to blue screen special effects, necessary due to "fringing" of the image from the birds' rapid wing flapping. The film premiered March 28, 1963 in New York City. The Museum of Modern Art hosted an invitation-only screening as part of a 50-film retrospective of Hitchcock's film work. The