Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Sling Blade (contains spoilers!)

Sling Blade (dir Billy Bob Thornton, 1996) is definitely not a formulaic Hollywood feature film.  It has a strong theatrical feel to it throughout and this allows BBT some leeway with his approach. Many of the scenes have a fixed camera angle and are shot through the proscenium arch, with the actors very carefully blocked to ensure they can all be seen and can work together to move the story forward.

There are some missing steps in the linear narrative progression but it is still an engaging and very emotional movie, which even manages to be humorous in places.

BBT is Karl Childers, who has been in ‘The Nervous Hospital” for many years after killing his mother and her lover. Now released, he quickly befriends a kid – Frank – whose Mom, Linda, is being abused by her boyfriend, Doyle (played brilliantly by Dwight Yoakam). Although Karl seems gentle enough, his jutting jaw, strange voice and brooding face - as well as his much-discussed history - add tension throughout as we move towards the climax of the film. 

Things that did not work quite so well

  • The student interview at the beginning is far too expository – especially compared with some later subtleties.  And why the lamplight?
  • The mental hospital manager turning Karl loose without any clear idea of where he would go and then being surprised when it didn’t work out. He would never have let Karl stay at his house or left all his daughter’s toys on the bed!  Cheap gags.
  • We did not need Frank to say to Karl that he really wanted to kill Doyle.  Too much of a sledgehammer. We already understood where this was going.
  • The constant music  (Daniel Lanois) at the beginning, whilst atmospheric and haunting, got on my nerves after a while.
  • Frank’s mother goes from looking nervously at Karl in the store to suggesting that he move in with them in less than five minutes. This seems entirely implausible. Surely it would have been easy to write in a scene with Frank begging his Mom to let Karl stay with them?  She would have known that Doyle would hate the idea. If we are to believe that Doyle is a monster, we need to see her showing fear over this.
  • Vaughan is just slightly too stereotypical as the gay co-worker/family friend (even taking in account the age of the film).  Apparently BBT wrote this part specifically for John Ritter.  It adds some balance to the ensemble but misses the mark.  I think Vaughan would have helped more during the fight with Doyle – surely he would not have been so cowardly?
  • We do not really see the moment when Karl decides to murder Doyle – I think it would have been more satisfying for the audience if we witnessed the switch from Karl seeing no reason why he would kill again to planning this.


Things that worked well


  • When we first learn about Karl’s double murder, it seems like an accident caused by his reduced mental capacity but as the film progresses we find out that he has been exposed to a major trauma (being forced to bury alive his prematurely born brother) and has undoubtedly been abused.  The pacing allows time for us to absorb this horror once we have developed some empathy for Karl.
  • High and wide camera angles gave this a bit of a voyeuristic/CCTV feel to some of the scenes.
  • The way the music stops when he says “killed her”.
  • The bad guys were really bad. Doyle is a very realistic manipulative/abusive drunk and J.T. Walsh is positively vile as a bragging paedophile. Robert Duvall as the father is also very convincing.  Although I am not sure if we know whether he was mad before his wife was killed, we do get a strong sense in this scene of how Karl must have been brutalized as a child.
  • Good quirky details: Karl’s love of “French fried potatoes”; his explanation for having the hammer when he crashed into Linda’s bedroom;  the way BBT looks at the camera when he is walking down the street as if we are an observer – totally out of place with the rest of his behaviour; Jim Jarmusch as a Frostee Cream Boy hitting has hat on the top of the serving hatch; standing on the V of the bridge supports.
  • The use of horizontal strips of shadow to half light faces.
  • This film successfully uses stereotypes to explore themes of prejudice – the mentally challenged murderer who makes people nervous but then wins them over, inadvertently; the gay man ostracized by the church and struggling to assert himself; the mother desperate to find a father figure for her kid after her husband’s suicide, falling for the bad guy; the adorable kid, old beyond his years and troubled more than a child ever should be. 
  • Fantastic acting – it is hard to believe that Karl is BBT.  Even if this film had nothing else to offer, it would be worth watching for this performance.
  • For all the sadness and darkness in this film, the relationship between Frank and Karl is incredibly beautiful and uplifting.  

Monday, May 26, 2014

Dog 'tography

No actual film involved here but I did a little stills shoot as a favour to a friend last week and was quite pleased with the results.

It was a joint venture between Style Tails ("Design and Living for Pets"): http://www.styletails.com/  run by my amazing pal Sara White and the excellent restaurant Pips Dish near Covent Garden.  They needed someone to capture their first ever Doggie Sunday:  http://philipdundas.com/dogs-dinner/

I do like dogs but am more of a cat person so it was a bit intimidating being around 11 dogs (and their loving owners) in a very small space where food was being served.  But we pulled it off and I think my pics on the Style Tails blog look pretty good:

http://www.styletails.com/2014/05/21/photos-styletails-pipsdish-dog-lovers-sunday-lunch/

Here are a few of my faves:

















The full set is here: http://www.helenrosemier.com/styletails

Some things I learned:


  • Take more pics of the owners with their dogs, especially close up
  • Use the 70-200mm lens for less intrusive reportage shots
  • Have doggie treats to hand!
  • Don't drink wine until you have finished working
  • Take some pics of the kitchen and more of the waiting staff handing over the food
  • Get at least one useable pic of a doggie in the window




    It was a fun day with lovely people and a good experience but I really don't think I am cut out to be a pet photographer....





Update on kit

So I *may* have gone on a little bit of a spree...

I took my camera into the wonderful London Camera Exchange, following the weird issue with my 5D Mk3 detailed here.  And, inevitably, while I was waiting for the paperwork to be sorted out, my attention turned to a lovely little secondhand tripod. It had been brought in just half an hour before I'd arrived so clearly destiny!  The previous owners' paperwork indicates it was bought new from Wex in January and is showing very little wear.

It is made up of this and this and was a bargain for £159 all in (but without a bag). Also this means I now have the option to upgrade to a video head. I have been very happy with my Camlink tripod and I like its stability but it is heavy to transport with all my other equipment and without a car.

As one of my fellow DFP students observed, even short film sequences look more professional when the camera moves so I am keen to have something portable and with a smooth movement.

My next purchase was also related to this ambition but I was nervous about the effectiveness of the device and so cautiously went for a cheap shoulder rig for the purposes of exploration and experimentation. I have not had chance to use it much yet but I can already tell that it does not work well over the shoulder. Might need my Dad to work his engineering magic on it.

Now, that I am working on the sound part of the DFP course, I decided to bite the bullet and get a decent microphone.  Plus a dead cat and a 3m boom pole.

And one final thing:  some continuous lighting.

I keep thinking I am going to need this stuff for certain projects I get roped into (outside my comfort zone) and so buy things in advance of a specific deadline, then finding I really don't need the kit after all.  Still, I am sure it will come in handy one day...



Prix Pictet - fifth cycle: Consumption

According to its mission statement: “The Prix Pictet aims to harness the power of photography – all genres of photography – to draw global attention to the issues of sustainability, especially those that concern the environment.” This year’s theme is Consumption. 

The exhibition room was smaller than expected and the work maybe not quite as impactful as the last cycle’s Power theme, but very interesting nevertheless.

I just saw the sad news that Michael Schmidt died on Saturday, a few days after hearing that he had won the 100,000 Swiss franc prize. He had apparently been too ill to pick up the accolade in person.

His work Lebensmittel is about the mass production of food and depicts images from factories, farms and slaughterhouses.  The presentation reminded me of the huge Moriyama wall at the Tate Modern joint retrospective with Klein.  Schmidt’s approach is much more academic, though. None of the images were impressive in their own right (presumably a conscious decision?) – reference book style and old-fashioned. The repetition of lines and rhythms and textures help it to work as montage but I found that the low contrast of the monochromes, the apparent randomness of colour images interspersed and the lack of clear narrative left me cold.  And it bothered me slightly that the photograph of the box of cucumbers (?) was the only one that was repeated.

Judges said his work was "an epic and hugely topical investigation into the ways in which we feed ourselves" but I didn’t feel that this ‘investigation’ really revealed anything that we did not already know.  I would have preferred to see this as a rapid slide show, with its 1940s/50s documentary feel.

My two favourites were Mishka Henner and Hong Hao.  I have a soft spot for Henner having heard his thoughts on art and appropriation at the OCA student weekend in Leeds and I do genuinely find this work (Beef & Oil) to be extremely powerful.  It doesn’t trouble me at all that he didn’t press the shutter for these images although I can understand that some people would baulk at describing him as a ‘photographer’ rather than an ‘artist’. A fascinating can of worms

Whatever Henner is or isn’t, his work always captures my imagination and I think this set should be a real eye-opener to many people who have not contemplated the scale of US cattle farms.  The size of the feedlots is almost as unfathomable from a space-eye view as from the ground and Henner creates stunning art out of a repulsive reality. The two pieces on display at the V&A were by far the most appealing in the room, to my eye, as well as creating a very emotional response.

This is worth reading to provide more context about the feedlots:  http://photoworks.org.uk/coronado-feeders-dalhart-texas/

Whilst Henner nails the big picture of consumption, Hong Hao succeeds by effectively showing us consumption on a very personal level.  His project My Things started in 2001 with Hao scanning objects and then creating large scale collages. These images are beautiful and work on a number of different levels visually.  Seen small online they look like bright, beautiful patterns; up close, the full sized images provide an incredible journal of daily life. We see juxtapositions, undersides, angles and throw-aways that normally have no significance, on an epic scale. I would love to see all of the work together in one place.

Simple, painstaking, brilliant.

Of the others on the shortlist, I found the work of Adam Bartos to be quite appealing. His series Yard Sale consists of some simple still life compositions showing the recycling culture in the US – a delightful contrast to mass consumerism and ‘Walmartisation’.  These are quiet, voyeuristic depictions - there are no people present; light seems to be natural, even a little clumsy at times; there is not a central focus with messy compositions and elements spilling out of frame. Bartos uses colour, texture, light and line to create delightful images you can gaze at for a long time.

Juan Fernando Herrán’s Escalas explores the blurring of boundaries between urban and rural areas and particularly the lack of living space in Medellin, a large city in Colombia.  We see the signs of the humans taking over of the landscape and even mundane subject matter has been presented beautifully here. The colours are warm and earthy giving a warm homely feel to even the bleakest of spaces.  These look like film sets to me.  I wonder if the V & A deliberately placed Herrán’s images either side of a doorway? 

The Untitled 2012 series by Abraham Oghobase stands out for being all black and white, heavily contrasted and nicely coherent as a series.   The subject matter again addresses the issue of urban space, showing how in Lagos every bit of wall space is used for painted classified ads. The photographer places himself in the images, performing alongside the theme of the ads (eg piano lessons, laundry, car services).  The work does not really say ‘consumption’ to me or have much resonance on an emotional level but it does appeal aesthetically – I really like the heavy contrast and the rich textures and the gritty, dynamic street feel.

Motoyuki Daifu’s Project Family is introduced as “My mother sleeps every day. My Dad does chores. My brothers fight. There are trash bags all over the place. Half-eaten dinners, cat poop, mountains of clothes: this is my lovable daily life, and a lovable Japan.”  This series did not work for me on any level. I found the lighting too harsh and depth of field in the foreground to be too soft.  Clive said that these elements and the blown out bits were “all part of the semiotic” and we all discussed how differently these images could have been.  They just didn’t strike me as being very authentic, for some reason, although they have clearly achieved a sense of manageable chaos and claustrophobia.

Comparisons were made with Richard Billingham and Stephen Shore photographing food, by students who are much cleverer than I.  It just reminded me of my Aunt Lil’s house in Keighley and I kicked myself for not photographing it while before it was too late.

Rineke Dijkstra has created an appealing series of portraits of Almerisa, a Bosnian refugee.  We watch as the five year old grows up and transitions into an adult in her new surroundings in the Netherlands. There are some very nice touches – how her feet can’t reach the ground for the first few years but later are firmly and defiantly rooted or tucked under her; her body posture –in the early teens, showing rebellion through to confident grounded adulthood; the type of chair; the vertical and horizontal lines; neutral lighting; colour blocks etc.  Good mise-en-scène, in other words.

I admire Dijkstra’s work and understand that any theme is open to a wide interpretation but this just did not fit well for me - I cannot really see the link with ‘consumption’.

Allan Sekula’s Fish Story similarly felt out of place but in this case because the images looked so dated.  I am not sure exactly what the series is about even after reading the artist’s statement.  There is a strong documentary feel to these images, which were taken in the early 90s, and it makes for fairly unchallenging viewing but didn’t evoke anything much in me. 

Laurie Simmons’ series The Love Doll was the most troubling. I am still none the wiser about what the artist is actually trying to say – in fact her statement on the Prix Pictet website comes across as slightly unhinged to my ears (“I began to tease out a personality from this commodified subject and allowed her persona to emerge.”).  There are very many complex issues at play such as identity, exploitation, fetishisation, surrogacy and control here as well as the gender landmine and the allegedly central theme of consumption. 

I am not too familiar with Simmons’ other work so there is almost certainly much more context to this but, in isolation, I found it to be quite creepy. It reminded me of Emma Donoghue’s novel Room (and so many terrifying true stories of the abduction and imprisonment of women) and of George Saunders’ The Semplica-Girls Diaries.  The lighting and composition are superb and I do applaud this kind of conceptual work but I confess I could not look at it for very long.

Tea Coffee Cappuccino includes a bare bottom, in full daylight, on a busy street, so this must be Boris Mikhailov!  The series aims to chronicle the changes in the photographer’s hometown of Kharkov, where blatant consumerism has become rampant. “The reality of globalization has come and extended to the places where we live and rest. A flux of cheap commodities has conquered ubiquitously, creating a colourful new plastic reality.”  The Prix Pictet website does not (cannot) display this work very accurately so it was quite a surprise to see it “in the flesh”.   The images are snapshot sized, which pulls the viewer in to an intriguing world. It is happy and bright, colourful and lively but the angles, chaotic subject matter and juxtapositions manage to create a sense of dystopia. These could be sets for an Andrea Arnold movie.

All in all, a very interesting collection of images and ideas in this small room at the V & A and another great OCA study visit.


Take-aways to think about for my own work….

  • Narrative is important unless every individual image can stand up for itself
  • Ordinary stuff can be very compelling if collected and presented in an authentic way
  • My shots of Dad’s garage are almost as good as Bartos’ Yard Sale images
  • Photoshop does just have to be about manipulation, it can also work very well to present truths more powerfully
  • Develop something visually appealing into a more compelling narrative and show more context (eg doorways and windows)
  • If family and friends talk about something in such a way that it is clearly extraordinary (like Aunt Lil’s house) then it is certainly worth photographing
  • Size matters – small can be very powerful too
  • Never underestimate how different a print on a gallery wall can be from an image on a website



Saturday, May 17, 2014

In praise of the OCA Digital Film Production course...

I am half way through Digital Film Production and thought I would pause to reflect on how much I am loving it.  

Here are 12 great things about DFP:


  1. I get to watch loads of movies without feeling like I am slacking.
  2. It allows me to "direct" my friends and family (AKA: boss them around, with impunity).
  3. Planning a sequence helps develop storytelling skills - essential for all forms of visual communication.
  4. Thinking about making films has encouraged me to think outside a single image and more about creating a series.
  5. It opens the mind to an experimental mixed media approach.
  6. I find myself enjoying films more, with a deeper understanding of the techniques.
  7. I am definitely less intimidated by film critics and now feel confident about defending my (minority) views about certain movies.
  8. It unlocks the mysteries of mise-en-scène!
  9. It has made me think a lot about physical depth in a frame.
  10. Everything I am doing feels really creative and experimental, almost playful at times - this would be a real tonic for anyone who has reached a plateau (or hit a wall) in stills photography.
  11. I am learning vital new skills - the popularity of video is increasing all the time and many commentators think it will be the dominant medium in the future.
  12. The course encourages interaction/sharing with other students, providing feedback and support as well as ideas.

For anyone who is contemplating taking this course, I cannot recommend it highly enough. You don't need to worry about having any specialist equipment or great technical skills - it just aims to provide an introduction to the creative ideas and techniques in digital film production.

You will be able to wow your friends with your filmmaking skills and you may suddenly realise, like I have, that the kind of photographs you really want to make are the ones that look like stills from movies.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Kit

I have recently upgraded to the 5D Mark III but initially did not have time to explore it properly before having to shoot some portraits.  My first impression was that the images all look a bit pink so I have fiddled around with the 'Picture Style' settings. The Auto default is described as "The colour tone will be adjusted automatically to suit the scene. The colours will look vivid, especially for blue skies, greenery, and sunsets in nature, outdoor, and sunset scenes." (!)

I decided to opt for Neutral: "This Picture Style is for users who prefer to process images with their computer. For natural colours and subdued images."

Interestingly, I found that another photographer was already detailed in the Copyright Information field:  Gerald Mclean, an architectural photographer. http://www.geraldmclean.com

I sent him an email to see if he could shed light on this but have had no response. The camera was bought brand new (in immaculate condition) and in an authentic-looking, sealed box so I was rather perplexed. Given how expensive the purchase was, I decided to contact the shop (London Camera Exchange on the Strand) and they duly tried to trace any record of the serial number belonging to someone else. Nothing came up but they have kindly, and responsibly, offered to exchange the camera for a (real) new one.

And by splendid luck, there is a special offer on extra cashback for the bank holiday weekend so I will have £300 in my back pocket by the end of the process, if all goes to plan.  On this occasion I am glad I bought from a store rather than online as I probably would not have bothered to complain or send back the camera by post.

This purchase was triggered by the idea that I wanted to have the equipment to have a two camera set-up, particularly to make 'interviews' more interesting.  I nearly bought a video camera - possibly the Canon XA20 or LEGRIA G30 - but eventually decided to make the best of the DSLR approach as I already have a range of lenses.

I am still having a great deal of trouble with getting things in focus when I am videoing but I guess I will just have to keep practising to get this right.



In the process of researching the various options, I started coveting various bits of kit...

The Black Magic was the first thing that caught my attention and there is an interesting Raindance link here including some film clips: 

http://www.raindance.org/10-beautiful-shots-made-with-a-black-magic-camera/





The next thing that caught my attention was this:  




















http://store.zacuto.com/marauder/

It looks fantastic and has a good testimonial from Philip Bloom but I am not sure how much better it would be than something like this or more affordably, this or this?

My Dad built me a brilliant homemade Steadicam and it definitely helps but for it to be really effective, it probably needs to be held quite low which makes it difficult to ensure that the framing is correct. 





















I have been looking at other ways to ensure an acceptable handheld recording but not really sure what is the obvious choice. If anyone has any insights, I would love to hear them.

Also, and I am not just saying this because I have a birthday coming up but I feel that I almost certainly need something like this bad boy.  Again if anyone has any thoughts about a good (better) option to improve sound recordings, please let me know.  Am currently just relying on the internal camera mic.


Mosjukhin outtakes #2

I was afraid this might be a bit too sappy and that it would look a bit like Sara was dead but I think it worked pretty well in the end, considering I was just sweeping up clips from the cutting room floor....




Mosjukhin outtakes #1

I shot quite a lot of footage for the Mosjukhin experiment; some of it work OK and some of it didn't. I then experimented with editing the clips to create some other sequences. This was just for fun... (warning: contains a naked photo of Ron Jeremy!)