Sequencing and the Edit

We had a great lecture on Monday about 'Sequencing and the Edit'.

We firstly spoke about how we manage and go about editing imagery from shoots that we do, how we have in the past tackled editing 300 images down, say, to 5 images for a fashion story. These are some of the ways I manage to edit imagery; put the images that work the best into a separate folder and look at the images as a set; choose imagery where the model looks at her best- no strange poses or eye blinking images; choose imagery that really enhance the quality of the clothing and make the clothing look its best and in terms of sequencing, as I edit digitally, I would place the images in an order that portray the narrative of the fashion story the most clear and interesting, in the separate folder created containing the most successful images.

Cinema is a brilliant resource to look at when thinking of sequencing and the edit, I think as part of my work outside of lectures I will analyse part of a film and look at specific scenes and understand how the story progresses, to get a more clear understanding of editing.

During the lecture, Adam showed us some pieces of work, heavily graphic based, showing the idea of editing and sequence, not only taking the imagery into consideration, but the layout and art direction too. Whilst showing us images of photo-shoots and photocopies of examples of work, we were introduced with some lovely quotes, showing ideas of what practitioners believe the photograph to be, for instance.

'Photographs really are experience captured, and the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in acquisitive mood'_ Susan Sontag, 1977

Editing and art direction are big interests to myself, I like to look at different publications and question why certain elements have been had, why certain copy have been put in a certain place etc.. so it was great to see and discuss some art direction pieces from practitioners.

Specifically, Alexey Brodovich.

To be honest I haven't come across Brodovich's work before (or if I have I'm unsure of it) and this is quite surprising considering he is a well known art director: is very creative and began to challenge the art direction of publications in the early 1930's. Brodovich is most famous for his artistic direction for Harper's Bazaar. He was and is still a very influential person in the creative industry. Brodovich was initially hired to work for Harper's to turn the magazine into a rival for Vogue, he began to bring in artists into the magazine, specifically from the Parisian scene to add something new to this publication. During the 1920's and early 30's magazines were very formal Brodovich changed this by playing with the layout of a publication- his art direction was much more dynamic: his layouts were much more engaging to look at than the formal stuff that was around prior to Brodovich's post at Harper's. What with the technology changes during the 1930's, Brodovich wanted to celebrate this and highlight this more so, this is probably why he was such a success, and just proves that the saying, 'Being in the right place, at the right time' is highly valid.

After the lecture, I began to think about our project and the ways we may want to sequence and edit our imagery. On Moira's blog, she posted some images from the photographer, Nigel Tomm, looking at distorted imagery, this immediately reminded me of the Comme Des Garcons advertisements, with the crumpled distorted look. With our theme in mind we could maybe look at this idea and try it out once we have the photographs: I like the idea of changing the image and adding more meaning to the image. This may be a way we edit our imagery, I think it would take the commercial look away from the image, and become more 'arty', which I think as a group we would want.