I decided to start researching ‘onset photography’ to see what it’s really about and how interesting I find it. To start with, I cleared up a faux pas I’ve made on a few occasions, when referring to a cinematographer as an onset photographer. I read up about cinematography and cinematographer’s responsibilities from the frequently deceptive words of Wikipedia. As much as I love to ridicule the sight at its mention, I can’t help but use it to look up little things like that, it’s simply too uncomplicated. The cinematographer is seems to administer a lot of his skill towards the production of the film. Often referred to as the ‘Director of Photography’ who is expected to communicate with the directed and help set up the lighting, camera angles, choose filters and loads of other things. On the other hand, from what I’ve understood that is, the onset photographer records his surroundings and takes artistic shots of the scenes throughout the film.
To begin with after watching the classic ‘E.T’ film with fellow Photography student and house mate Mr.Earnden, we popped over to the Bonus Features disc on this special edition I bought from the charity shop. A fantastic buy – cheap, classic film and a little introduction to the photographer they had on set at the time – Allen Daviau. For some unfortunate reason I can’t get a lot of insight into Daviau over the net. However what I have found seems to imply that he was far more than a photographer and E.T may have been a ‘special project’. I won’t bother listing the links I found...because they didn’t really interest me and I merely skimmed through.
Next I looked up onset photography on the net, and came across this article:
http://www.popphoto.com/Features/Shooting-Still-Lifes-A-Photographer-on-SetNot what I would call a fantastic article, but a little more insight into the field none the less and to be honest I’m not too captivated just yet. After reading the article on French, I decided to take a look at her website:
In reference to her ‘Feature Films’ selection, I find it quite difficult to put into words how I feel about the photographs. I think the reason I might find them strange is that the photographer is not constructing the image, yet these are constructed images. She doesn’t really seem to be documenting the film either, on the other hand French seems to be using the film set and what has been constructed by other artists and producing these artistic shots. Yet as I run through them I am trying my hardest to appreciate her work and understand what she is doing, yet I can’t help but thinking: ‘phony, phony, phony, phony, phony...’ and so on.
Take the photograph above by French as an example. To me it just looks like a movie still. And that may even be what the artist is after, I’m not quite sure. A lot of the photographs are passionate and picturesque however to the extent that I find them boring and jejune to be honest. I find they lack energy and pizzazz, I flicked through them quickly and wasn’t particularly struck by any of them. So I suppose it can be said I’m not a huge fan of Kimberly French’s feature film photography, perhaps I should just leave it at that.
I realise that my writing so far has been somewhat critical and antagonistic; however I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear that I later found an onset photographer who made me happy. The man getting my endorphins working is photographer, Dmitry Futoryan. And this is his website:
His pictures are radiant and his subject matters are delightful. He is taking the kind of photographs I was thinking about when referring to onset photography. He has recorded the film making process with the production crew and the actors depicting their scenes. The photographs are fun, the colours are bright the lightings fantastic and the people look as though they’re having a great time with Futoryan. This is defiantly the kind of thing I like and I really want to keep Futoryn in mind. Besides his photographs I also like his actual website, it’s very simplistic and I think the white enhances the brilliant brightness of the photographs.
To end with I will post one of David Futoryan’s photographs which I really like. It’s an image taken while shooting a Doritos advert. I don’t know how the photograph was taken so I need to remember to ask a lecturer and try finding out. It looks kind of grainy, perhaps shot on film (?) and I’m not sure if maybe a filter was used. Either way it’s got a certain look to it which I like and will list my discoveries on possibilities of how it was taken as soon as I find out.
( Had to leave the link because I couldn't post the image)
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