The Moving Pictures pt 3

This is the final part of The Moving Pictures. If it is your first time here, I encourage you to take a look at Part 1 and Part 2 for the complete guide of searching inspiration in movies.

Today I would like to present you another movie: Mr Brooks. We will walk through a few frames and make some conclusions regarding finding inspiration in movies. Listen to this song while reading, it will assure the proper mood (music from the movie):

First of all I highly recommend watching Mr.Brooks. It is an incredible story about a serial killer, The Thumbprint Killer as called by the police. The plot is intelligent and characters… yea, characters make it exceptional. Even if you don’t watch crime stories so often, this one is definitely worth a try. OK, but let’s better get down to business:

Movies are not only portraits

Last week I have concentrated on portraiture in films. While we will come back to it, I would like to take a moment and look at those two scenes. Their main purpose is, in my opinion, mood building. Such scenes appear between the actual, character scenes. They focus on details, little things that create the atmosphere. Those scenes can take a movie to another level, add the proper blend of music and sound and we get perfect artistic frames.

We, photographers often pay especial attention to details. Joe McNally often suggests to get closer and observe those little things. Little doesn’t always mean small, rather things that seem obvious at first sight, but breathtaking when exposed properly.

(here is a nice, recent read from Joe)

Let’s get back to faces:

Lighting is pretty simple, no fireworks here, although it works well for the mood. It’s night, greenish street lights, usual blue to accentuate the time and slightly warmer, but still bit greenish light in the room. The basics that we so often see on the big screen. I’m showing you above frames to show the consistency in lighting. I find it very important while creating the atmosphere, so keep it in mind while working on your next photo-series.

Now, let’s take a look at something different:

The lighting is pretty simple. You can achieve the blue cast with proper white balance setting. Then just add the highlight on the face either with a reflector or a strobe. The composition is strong and the use of a mirror, while not so original, is very well executed.

I hope you already got a lot of inspiring thoughts connected to the above frames so lets take a look at some action shots. Action and dynamism are often very desired qualities:

The guns. I know, so obvious, they are probably used a bit too often, but what can we do. A crime story without a gun is like a naked ski jumper… (uh..yea, Olympics did its brainwashing;)

When viewing portraits you can distinguish those well lighted and badly lighted, those well composed and those badly composed and so on. However, when it comes to the subject, you can most easily tell apart the static ones and dynamic ones. It is just another quality that is definitely worth getting engrossed in.

The dynamism can also be achieved by confronting contrasting elements. Look at the below frame. The beauty contrasted with scissors. Maybe it wouldn’t be so unconventional if they weren’t in someones neck…

Mr. Brooks has even an artistic nude scene, however, I will leave it to you to find it;)

Maybe some conclusions:

As you can observe, movies can fulfill their role as an inspiration tool. I know for sure that there are many time-wasting movies, having both boring plot and technique. On the other hand there are a few exceptional ones. Maybe not always in our style, not our character, but you can’t argue, when it comes to lighting, those guys in Hollywood (and not only there) know what they are doing. Go after your taste, but get out of your comfort zone from time to time, I know you’ll be glad you did.

• Remember, movies are actually a big bunch of frames combined together.
• The bigger the budget, the less likely it is shot in natural light. They like to dim the whole scene and then use dozens of lights to achieve exactly the results they want.
• Don’t get me wrong, we can often achieve better results with two small strobes. The difference is that we need the light for that 1/200 of a second (or so), they need it for a minute or even longer.
• Don’t forget about composition. Movies have somehow different rules, camera above the shoulder of a second character to create the character of a real conversation.
• Be open-minded, don’t mimic! Translate what you see into our, photography language.
• Last but not least – characters. Models are used to static posing, often have one, learned face expression. Make them move, make them feel, make them play!

I hope you guys enjoyed that little series as much as I did. Next week we will go with a new topic. Take care and see you later!