Annie Leibovitz - Unfinished

This is a series of photographs taken by the artist 'Annie Leibovitz'

Film Noir research

This was the most  popular film noir movie that was on imdb. This is called ‘sunset blvd.’

The plot summary for this is ‘In Hollywood of the 50's, the obscure screenplay writer Joe Gillis is not able to sell his work to the studios, is full of debts and is thinking in returning to his hometown to work in an office. While trying to escape from his creditors, he has a flat tire and parks his car in a decadent mansion in Sunset Boulevard. He meets the owner and former silent-movie star Norma Desmond, who lives alone wit her butler and driver Max von Mayerling. Norma is demented and believes she will return to the cinema industry, and is protected and isolated from the world by Max, who was his director and husband in the past and still loves her. Norma proposes Joe to move to the mansion and help her in writing a screenplay for her comeback to the cinema, and the small-time writer becomes her lover and gigolo. When Joe falls in love for the young aspirant writer Betty Schaefer, Norma becomes jealous and completely insane and her madness leads to a tragic end. ‘ (taken from the ‘sunset blvd.’ imdb page http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043014/ ) this film ends with tragedy and so this could be very useful to my work as I would like to add tragedy and pain into my work as I think this reflects the genre ‘film noir’ and this would also be a very powerful emotion to film. 

Photographs; trying out effects, and importance of lighting and composition.

This is one photograph that i took in the style of Film Noir, I think that this does represent the genre well with the use of composition, lighting and the editing that I have done to it. Which is shown above in 'gif' format. The task that was set was to take an ordinary fairy tale story and add a Film Noir twist on it. The story here is that the models are in a casino, with the use of mise en scene I think that this is recognisable. For this particular image I tried to focus on lighting, this is because with the research that I carried out, I saw a pattern with this. This is a very important part of recognising if a photograph/film is set in the era of Film Noir. One thing that I need to consider with lighting is if the brightness is going to be intense then this could ruin some detail in the frame. For example, the cards that one of the models is holding are not clear, this could become a problem as this could become un-recognisable, therefore possibly ruining the quality/effect of the image. This is also something that needs to be considered while editing, this is because while I was editing I used the brightness tool to enhance the dramatic lighting. However, I did not pay attention to the effect that it was having on the cards, this is something that I need to focus on more when it comes to filming and editing the opening titles to a Film Noir movie. In this image I think that it is obvious who is the protagonist in this setting, this is by the way the models are portrayed in this image. For example; the model on the right is clearly the main character here, this is because of the way she is standing, and the light is focused on her, this was done to directly imply to the viewer that she is the important character here. The light is bright and her full face is shown here and she is appearing to be stood in a very direct and strong way, whereas the girl on the right is covering her face with the cards, and the light is not as focused on her, in contrast to the other person. This was done to show that possibly that character is not as important to the story as the other one. This could also suggest that her character is inferior in relation to the other character. The importance of each character is shown well I think, with the use of lighting, composition, editing and mise en scene. One other thing that is important here is the angle of the camera and how this photograph was taken. This is a landscape photo, it is this way as this is supposed to be (in a way) a still from a typical Film Noir movie. If the photo was taken in portrait mode then this would be a terrible photograph because it would defeat the point of the task. This was taken in line with the faces, it was a direct shot and had no upwards/downwards angles. However this was using a zoom so that the faces were more in frame, as the camera was far back and I did not want the background to be shown in this as I think that this would have ruined the quality of the image. I also used a relatively low exposure so that any thing that the light was not focused on was not bright or seen well, as I knew that this would have made it easier to edit and would have overall improved the photo. I should take this into consideration when making my opening titles as this is something that I feel is important.