Human uses of birds with effective mimicry of birds. The play's chorus consists of characters playing many identifiable species, including the kingfisher, turtledove, and sparrowhawk; birds feature as messengers and dancers, and several Athenians are compared to specific birds. In film, birds can feature as the major driving force in a story, as in Alfred Hitchcock's acclaimed 1963 "The Birds". Loosely based on Daphne du Maurier's story of the same name, it tells the tale of sudden attacks on people by violent flocks of birds. A bird plays the role of an outlet for a person's feelings in Ken Loach's much admired 1969 "Kes".
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