Los Abrazos Rotos

Today I finally watched 'Broken Embraces'. A film directed by Pedro Almodóvar, starring the amazingly beautiful Penélope Cruz.

I saw a poster for the film at my local museum a couple of months ago, the movie poster itself was very striking, and simple. The image, which I love, doesn't necessarily give much away about the film, although the image plays with main colour of teh film The image looks almost Andy Warhol-esque, it really is stunning and shows the prodominant colour of the film, intense red. Anyway, so I bought the DVD instead and after watching it I really do wish I could have seen it at the cinema.

The film, visually was stunning. Penelope always looked incredible. Her character: a mistress to a man with a huge obsession is a woman with attitude, but one who is inlove and is caught in a jealous and aggressive relationship with a highly wealthy, well known business man. The film was very inspiring, I love looking at films for inspiration for photoshoots and styling ideas. With this film, as with many, I love how the costume designer, Sonia Grande, really used the characters' clothing as a tool to the scene. The art director too, Víctor Molero, has amazing visual talent.

My favourite part of the film has to be when Penelope is sat in hair and make-up just before shooting the film, preparing for her role and the team are playing around with hair ideas and almost making Penelope look like a replica of Audrey Hepburn: it's amazing how much a wig and change of make-up can really evoke a character. The lighting in the film really enhanced the clothing and the lucious colours: it reminded me almost of Juergen Teller's imagery, with his clean and clear sharp white light fashion photography. Another visual I noticed was the art directors choice of showing certain details but highlighting them more prominently, for instance when Mateo (the film director in the film) is filming his film and the camera highlights her surroundings, to really build up a character, I really like this and like applying it to the photoshoots I do. Whilst watching the film I just couldn't help but link the visual of the film to an older post of mine, where I looked at Robert Doisneau:Plam Springs 1960 collection, the colours and the fashion choices sent me write back to those images.

I loved the film visually and the plot of the film too, I just wish I could speak Spanish so I didn't have to read the credits and then I would be able to just devoir the visuals of the film.

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.

(500) Days of Summer

The other day me and the lady watched, '500 Days of Summer' which aired on the big screen in september 09 (I know, how late am I?!?) anywhoo, I really enjoyed it.

My interest in the movie (initially) came in a package, the size and shape much similar to Katy Perry, they could literally be twins (and if you guys have bought Look magazine, this weeks, you will see that even journalists and stylists in the know have even made this mistake) that is Zooey Deschanel. She has a cool quirkyness about her and of course she is a beautiful actress.

I love the direction of the film mostly. It's so nice to see the way Marc Webb, the director, shows us the difference in time with the cute little countdown clock, which adds to the comedy of this rom com, flitering between the present and the future, showing a stereotypical view of the first few months of dating and then 300+ days into the relationship - its comical to see how the characters change. My favourite scene has to be the one where Tom (played by Joseph Gordon- Levitt) and Summer (played by Zooey Deschanel) go to the cinema to watch a film, then they are on the cinema screen, shown in black and white with Tom in the background and Summer in the foreground, arranged as if they are in ABBA's Knowing me Knowing You music video, the dialogue is sometimes random but funny.

The storyline does hint at the cliche love story, but as the narrator states at the beginning, 'This is not a love story' which in some ways it isn't, specially not your cliche girl meets boy, girl falls in love boy doesn't as in this film, it is the exact mirror opposite and we get to see the heel on the other foot (well, the shoe) with Tom's outlook.

A film that made me laugh, made me question and made me wonder. Lovely.

A quickie on the fashion- loved it, Zooey seeming pretty, pretty pretty and Tom, nerdy, handsome and preppy.

Simplicity does it....

I am a big fan and loyal reader of Elle magazine, it is one of my favourite, more commercial magazines that I read on a monthly basis, so much so, that last year the lady bought me a 12 month subscription and boohoo...my last issue dropped on my doormat a couple of days ago....I may need to invest in another subscription. (*Hint, hint, nudge, nudge*)#

Anywhoo....

In this issue (March2010) there is a really stunning and very simple shoot 'The Purist' photographed by Karen Collins and Styled by Sasa Thomann.

The fashion story is one which occupies this season's minimalist trend, showing clean lines, elegant dresses, crushed silk fabrics with a pure colour palette.

The shoot is different in that it is all shot on the same location, named ironically'Amazing space', in the same space, and is shot at the same angle throughout the 12 page fashion story. Now to some this may seem too simple and a little boring but it really helps in highlighting the clothes, and making the clothes become the focus they should be. It would have been nice to see the pages have full bleed, rather than one which has a white border but this again, helps the story really stand out in the issue.

(apology's for the images being portrait, well expect for the 1st and last one for some reason, It won't let me upload them any other way-dangggg!)

New york and Workwear- my two favourite things

My loyal readers will now know that I don't really like styling females very girly and pretty, that's just not my style, I like to give them a different sense of standing and a sense of being as you have probably already read in one of my past posts, so when I came across an article on a exhibiton where curators,critics and designers have the chance to mix the genders by dissecting imagery and symbols of certain dress codes that shape the business world, basically to help to inspire you to resist authority I read on.

I love the playfullness and abruptness of the 'no messing' attitude by simply placing imagery on top of imagery, by adding layers (literally and metophorically) and mixing genders ever so directally as John Stezaker has in Betrayal VIII.

I am so jealous that I won't make the exhibition, not because of some other glamourous prior engagement but for the very boring reason of not having the amazing opportunity of living in New York, but hay hoo, I guess I can catch it over the net.....boohhoooo :(

Inspirational, Jenny Saville

Fashion is all around and you can find it in one of the most unusual places....

One of my favourite artists of all time has to be the British artist, Jenny Saville, best known for her amazing painting technique and her phenomenal paintings of women.

When I was studying in my foundation year at Wakefield college, I studied this artist a hell of a lot through my year. I just love the way she paints, the colours she users are stunning, although lots of her imagery is quite uncomfortabe to look at, because of the way she portrays these women, and is able to highlight there physique in such a graceful way, makes her inspirational to me.

I like to look at the human form, Im a bit of a people watcher really which links to the post below, its part of my job to look at people and understand there characteristics and persona.

Monochrome Magazine

When I lived in surrey for the two years I was studying at UCA,I sometimes ventured into London, whether for a shopping trip, whether with my uni class for a brief or whether to just go get a yummy cupcake from Hummingbird Bakery (believe me they are so worth it!), and whenever I visited London my eyes where always on the prowl for anything and everything that looked good to me. Fabrics I saw, posters on the subway, flyers/leaflets, any sort of freebies (being a student and all :s) just everything around me, after all London is one of our top, if not the top city we have in Britain for creative talent and inspirational finds.


Anyway...

Yesterday I went to my dads house and whilst I was there, I had some time to have a look through my old sketchbooks, which is always good fun and sometimes cringeworthy. I came across a freebie magazine I grabbed whilst in the most fabulous of bookstores on this planet, R.D Franks, in London called Monochrome Magazine.

I had a quick flick through the mag and Im just infatuated with the art direction. It's not very me but for some reason it just grabbed my attention, I usually like things quite simple, but with a little edge, but the layout of this mag is all over the place, there's hand written text in some places, imagery dotted everywhere with overlapping text and imagery, and not only this but the magazine is half english half japanese. I love the look of the pages with the notepad background: some pages are just of one single image surrounded by its negative. I've looked for a webpage for the magazine but I cant find one and I want to share this with you guys so i've taken a couple of shots to give you a sense of the whole mag :)