The Stranger Is Fiction
// November 14th, 2009 // On Assignment
“The Stranger” is a drama being produced by young film-maker Emmanuel Okolo, based on a script by Ilaria D’Elia. Shooting starts next week but as usual there’s already been a lot of rehearsing, organising and other preproduction. Last weekend I went along to the Atrium to shoot some reference images of the cast in costume, a photo that will be used as part of the set and some headshots of people involved.
It’s only fairly recently that I’ve started to do stills photos for films. Photography done on the set while the filming is going on is called ‘film stills’ or ‘unit stills’, Skillset have a description here.
This kind of work is something I’ve wanted to do for a while and now I’m actually doing it I find I really enjoy it. It requires a wide mix of skills and there are plenty of opportunities to get good photos because there are usually interesting places and people to shoot. Unlike most of my work where I’m to some extent in charge of what’s being produced, on a film set I can just fade into the background and capture what goes on with other people doing the hard work of setting up situations and finding props, outfits and models actors!
Film productions also need staged photos that will be used to promote the films, for posters and so on, and that’s also something I enjoy doing, I’ve got a lot of experience doing promo photos for bands and shooting models and fashion spreads and a lot of the techniques are similar.
The photo up top was just me messing around in the studio, inspired by a picture from the September 2007 issue of Vogue (see half way down this page for the original). Apart from having a young actress in it’s not related to the film, and it’s too early to show any of the character photos, so I’ll just post some headshots, which I think turned out quite well. Actor headshots are usually used in black and white for casting, but I love color so that’s what I’m putting here!
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