Emma Long Photography

• 2011-09-02

  • Next I need to decided on which stills to choose for my project.
  • Research clothing styles and props.
  • Decide what lighting and camera to use.

• 2011-08-09

  Ideas

  Motel Scenes

  

  

  Michael Howard

  Below are a series of images called Room 17. Photographed by Michael Howard, the series shows the anticipation of a women in a motel as she is waiting for something. The series of images have shown me how lighting and positioning of objects can give a room a dramatic effect.

  

  

  
  

  Sophie Calle

  

  In 1981, Sophie Calle spent three weeks working as chambermaid in a hotel in Venice. This allowed her to spy on the guests. Like a detective or crime photographer, she photographs the momentarily unoccupied hotel rooms: she photographs the unmade or never slept in beds, the stray items left in bathrooms, the contents of suitcases and closets; she reads letters left lying in the open, takes photographs of the guests, and does even more. Sophie Calle published the photographs within the diary-like report of her ‹observations,› in the book entitled «Ecrit sur l’image. L’Hotel». Calle turns the viewer or reader into an accomplice of her voyeurism – filling them, too, with the urge to move unobserved through another’s private sphere. Like with many of Sophie Calle’s works, photographs and texts exist in a circular self-referring structure: the objects that Calles mentions in the text are found again in the photographs, but their role as evidence is first established through the telling of the story, whose believability lies solely in the hands of the artist. 

  After looking at Calle’s work it has got me thinking about the distance and angle of props in my photo and also how they relate to the era of the film.

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  Ideas

  Stills from No Country For Old Men

  

  

  

  LOCATION SEARCH

  I looked for a desert type location or somewhere that would have old dried out logs that look like they would fit in with the ‘no country for old men’ theme. The images below have harsh natural lighting, which is how the ‘stills’ from the film are captured. I don’t want to recreate exactly the same stills as in the film, so I think one of these location would work as it could allow me to add my own style to the final image.

  Highworth 

  
  

  Lydiard Park

  

  

  

  

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  Stills

  

• 2011-07-20

  Stills

  

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  Stills

  

• 2011-06-21

  Intolerable Cruelty

  Image ideas for set building or location

  Both images shown below work well as a still and I feel wouldn’t be too hard to recreate adding my own ideas to the photo. 

  One movie still is set in an office showing Miles Massey. The lighting is natural and pours through the windows behind the actors. The angle and zoom of the camera works well, as it is at eye level it picks up the emotion of the characters face whilst also allowing the viewer to notice the difference in body language between the two men.

  

  Below is another still from the movie. The lighting is subtle and slightly highlights the faces of the actors, I also like the symmetry within the still as it shows equal sides of the chairs and surrounding. There may also be back lighting to allow the pillars to be seen. I think this would be an interesting image to recreate as it tells an important part of the film and it has been lit very well.

  

• 2011-06-06

  Miller’s Crossing (1990)

  

  A highly styled ‘genre’ film which can perhaps be seen as a pastiche of all gangster movies. Tom Reagan is the laconic anti-hero of this amoral tale which is also, paradoxically, a look at morals within the criminal underworld of the 1930s. Two rival gangs vie for control of a city where the police are pawns, and the periodic busts of illicit drinking establishments are no more than a way for one gang to get back at the other. 

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  Fargo (1996)

  

  • Jerry works in his father-in-law’s car dealership and has gotten himself in financial problems. 
  • He tries various schemes to come up with money needed for a reason that is never really explained. It has to be assumed that his huge embezzlement of money from the dealership is about to be discovered by father-in-law. 
  • When all else falls through, plans he set in motion earlier for two men to kidnap his wife for ransom to be paid by her wealthy father (who doesn’t seem to have the time of day for son-in-law). 
  • The moment of the kidnapping, things go wrong and what was supposed to be a non-violent affair turned bloody. 
  • Jerry is upset at the bloodshed, which turns loose a pregnant sheriff from Brainerd, MN who is tenacious in attempting to solve the three murders in her.

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  No Country For Old Men (2007)

  

  • No Country For Old Men tells a story of Josh Brolin a hunter and welder out hunting one day in Texas. 
  • He stumbles across heroin, a bunch of dead bodies and a satchel with 2 million in cash.
  • He takes the satchel without reporting his sightings to the police.
  • However he does not know that a psychopath, Javier Bardem, is on his trail, murdering every bandit and bystander to reach the money and settle his quarry.
  • As Bardem evades Berlin it becomes more and more clear the destiny that lies in store. 
  • Sheriff Tommy Lee Jones is also on the trail with perpetually sad eyes looking on from his calm demeanor.