MONTBLANC'S TRIBUTE TO ALFRED HITCHCOCK

In an interactive, film-based and exciting manner, we discover the secrets behind Hitchcock's best-known masterpieces and experiences.

Pursued by a crop duster overhead, Cary Grant runs through a desolate cornfield. Tippi Hedren is pecked at by a flock of mysteriously aggressive gulls. Ingrid Bergman risks her life to go into a wine cellar, in search of a secret. Janet Leigh takes a shower at the Bates Motel and never comes out. Many of Hitchcock’s scenes remain the most memorable in movie history.

On a new website for Montblanc, created by Scholz & Volkmer, Berlin, the writing instrument manufacturer pays homage to the British director and launches their limited edition Alfred Hitchcock fountain pen.

Hitchcock’s cinematic masterpieces take centre stage on “Icons of Suspense”, with clips and interactive features. The staging of the film icons has been medially enhanced. As a result, the sinister gulls from The Birds don’t only attack the Tippi Hedren in the film, but also seemingly attack the user at the screen

Various interactive tools, for example voice-over or slide mechanisms, enable the user to take a look behind the icons of suspense and, as a result, into the workshop of the master of suspense. For instance, you can discover Hitchcock’s use of colour and how the dizziness effect was with the camera in Vertigo.

A ubiquitous play button for the user connects Hitchcock’s classics with an element of contemporary perception of movies and also guides the user in a linear movement through the site.

The pen itself is described as having “legendary icons of a genius captured on a writing instrument”, with features such as 53 engraved hatch marks on the pen in tribute to his 53 complete life works and an optical effect on the pen’s surface as a reminder of the staircase scene in Vertigo.

The sinister shape of the famous murder weapon in Psycho provides the inspiration for the pen’s clip. A further reminder of the 1960 horror classic is on the pen’s cap ring: an elaborate engraving featuring the original inscription of the film reel of Psycho.

Scholz & Volkmer were also responsible for the digital experience, “Tribute to the Mont Blanc”, created for Montblanc in 2011, in which the user is taken on a 360-degree ‘flight’ of the peak in the style of Google’s street view technology.

The experience was created with a camera custom-built with six lenses, five pointing in all directions and one pointing towards the ground.