November 2009 ~ Up and Coming

Monday, November 30, 2009

Film Stills

3:56 PM Mathea No comments

I'm working on the final cut of my film final and I decided to take a few screen captures to share from my film. My goal for the film is to be a promotional video for a made up clothing company. It doesn't have a narrative and instead focuses on different textures, fabrics, the model in the clothes, and the environment in which the clothes are placed. I took stills of my model, Julie, in the same locations that I filmed her and some of those images have already been posted on my flickr site. The pictures I took of the other two days of shooting I included in earlier blog posts. I am still working on the film so I'm not sure what is going to make it into the final cut. Here are some of the stills from the actual footage:

Listening to: Twice by Little Dragon

Thanksgiving

11:48 AM Mathea No comments

A few pictures from Thanksgiving. Taken with a Nikon D200 and the camera in the 6th picture down is a large format camera.

Singin' In the Rain

6:58 PM Mathea No comments

Yesterday I watched Shanghai Knights with a friend and at one point in the movie Jackie Chan's character, Chon Wang, starts to fight the bad guys and pays homage to the famous Singin' in the Rain scene with Gene Kelly. I looked the video up online and then I found countless other videos that use Kelly's scene as a reference or videos of artists trying to totally recreate the scene. I know its cheesy but its impossible to watch some of these and not smile at the end. Enjoy!

The original scene from Singin' in the Rain with Gene Kelly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmCpOKtN8ME

Here is the scene from Shanghai knights with Jackie Chan fighting with an umbrella. The original song Singin' in the Rain is also playing in the background:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvaFDnVFiec

Usher made a tribute to the scene by shooting his own. If you like this video then youtube it and there are some great videos of Kelly's version right next to Usher's so you can see how similar they are:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-0GEoNDxAc

A VW commercial that mixes part of the original scene from the movie with new footage to make it appear as if Gene Kelly is breakdancing. Awesome but a little creepy too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs_T_cEoX6I

George Sampson, 2008 winner of Britain's Got Talent, dancing to Singin' in the Rain...amazing breakdancing that is just fun to watch, especially during the middle of the dance (you'll see what I mean):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0P13ucUeJ8

Listening to: Singin' in the Rain

Last day of shooting

11:12 PM Mathea No comments

These are the last set of stills from my final film for the first semester. There will be a few more coming soon as well as my favorite images from all three days of shooting.

Listening to: Bad Romance by Lady Gaga

Cornell Shoot Film Stills

7:23 PM Mathea 1 comment

My friend Julie is helping me out with my final film project and of course I couldn't do a film shoot without taking stills as well. Here are some stills from the shoot:

Listening to: Hometown Glory by Adele

1000 Awesome Things

9:21 AM Mathea No comments

I found this really entertaining website called 1000 Awesome Things. I know it has nothing/little to do with photography and art but I thought it was worth mentioning. I promise it will keep you entertained.

http://1000awesomethings.com/

Listening to: Foundations by Kate Nash

Audrey Hepburn on Lookbook

7:37 PM Mathea No comments

I try to check lookbook.nu almost every day because there are so many incredible images and ideas for shoots that are being circulated through the site. There is always something new every time I go back. I came across this first image a couple days ago and I loved the shot on the right. I think the images are paired nicely for the nature of the site, although the one on the right stands out. She also reminded me of Audrey Hepburn.

Here is the link to the page of the woman in this first image:

http://lookbook.nu/user/17501-Lisa-M

Also check out this awesome post about one of my favorite photographers Guy Aroch:

http://cyanatrendland.com/2009/11/10/guy-aroch-photography/

Listening to: Haven't Met You Yet by Michael Buble

Tumblr

6:54 PM Mathea No comments

One of my friends told me about using tumblr as a way to blog pictures. People use different blog sites for different things and tumblr was a great site for pictures. After looking through different sites that my friends and other people had created I decided tumblr was a great place to upload a different picture every day or as often as I could keep it up. My intention with tumblr is to over time collect pictures in one place so that people can learn about my style and what appeals to me visually. All the images are taken by other people unless otherwise noted and it is easy to share images and follow what other people are posting. I'm going to try and keep it up as long as I can:

http://upandcoming.tumblr.com/

Here are two images I posted recently. The first one is from my 16mm b&w film I made for my cinema production class and the second one is from another tumblr site.

lookbook

1:23 AM Mathea 1 comment

For anyone who is interested in fashion, I would highly recommend checking out this site:

http://lookbook.nu/

The site calls itself "an international social experiment in style."

I think the site has built up a very good reputation so a lot of the looks and outfits that are posted by members of the site are contemporary and innovative and reflect trends of the moment. Its a great place to find inspiration for your own style or just look at how other fashion enthusiasts put together outfits. Some of the pictures are great for the photography as well as the fashion. Some of the pictures have given me great ideas for how to photograph a certain look and focus on the clothes. Its gotten me thinking how I would photograph a certain style of outfit to highlight certain aspects.

For example this first outfit is created around the brooch and the shots clearly feature it as a focus. Therefore the culture of the outfit and the motivation of the look is captured within these images which makes it a great advertising shot for the brooch and the clothes. There is a consistency throughout the three images which sells the style. While these three images might not be the most incredible images in the history of photography they do very successfully sell her "style" which is the point of her uploading this image, to get the viewers of the site to vote for her picture and her outfit.

The people who upload to this website aren't marketing advertising campaigns for major clothing companies, but they are marketing their outfits to the viewers of the site so that their "profiles" can be checked out. This means that the way in which they present their clothes is extremely important. It is interesting to see how each person markets their style. Here are some other pictures I really like:

This image was taken by one of my favorite photographers Guy Aroch:

This image below is from lookbook. I saw the picture on lookbook and I immediately thought of the picture by Aroch. I love making visual connections between pictures that I have encountered in very different places.