Twitter, BFI and Cassavetes

To continue with my jump over to film blogging this month I would like to mention an incident that happened via Twitter this week.


The BFI (British Film Institute) were running a Twitter-based competition on the original American indie-director John Cassavetes.  Cassavetes was someone who I studied in great detail when studying so it was all but necessary for me to reply to the BFI's tweet, which asked anyone to mention their favourite Cassavetes film.

I responded with Shadows and a short snippet about why I loved it.  In fact, Shadows was the first film that I had ever written a published essay on.  I was in the second year of my BA, studying Modernist Cinema, and had written an essay on the use of music in the films of Cassavetes and Visconti.  The printed essay was shorter and only focused on the use of music and Cassavetes' Shadows.

The essay can be read here.

Cassavetes on Cassavetes was the prize. Excellent.

Also, the BFI are releasing all of Cassavetes' films on Blu-Ray.

What is really fantastic about this little story is that I am still quite new to Twitter, so I must be doing something right!  Find me here.

-PM

Aftermath...

Week 14: "Show us the aftermath." - Maciej Dakowicz

With limit time this week my photo opportunities were limited to what I could find whilst shopping or walking to and from work. Luckily my work is firmly based on the fleeting moments so I found something quite fitting for this week's brief.

This 'aftermath' scene is the result of a few things: one, bad parking by the guilty owner of the silver car; two, the placement of the car beside the freshly painted taxi mural; and finally, the 'Keep Right' sign pointing at the traffic warden who is upholding his position and booking the silver car.

-PM

"When you have to shoot: shoot! Don't Talk"

Challenge 7: '"When you have to shoot: shoot! Don't Talk" - Il Brutto

Make a picture containing The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' - Jens Olof Lasthein

Taken as part of the Street Photography Now challenge.For more info:streetphotographynowproject.wordpress.com/

This was a very open challenge. And, based on the majority of responses posted in the pool thus far, I can see that most people opted for the more obvious interpretation: framing an image to contain three figures to represent the 'good', 'bad' and 'ugly'. And, to be honest, I was tempted to do the same. I also thought about taking the cinematography of Leone's film and applying that to street photography (wide framing, close-ups of eyes, or the fantastic of 'Triangle of Trust' from the film's conclusion).

In the end I decided to take Il Brutto's words to heart and photographed without asking or talking to anyone, which was quite odd. My thinking was to walk constantly and photograph as I went. So, this photography was more invasive and intrusive than my normal street photography, which can be highly sociable and interactive. As a result my style was based more on the work of Bruce Gilden or Mark Cohen than Jens Olof Lasthein, yet I still complied with his challenge.

Street Photography Now - Week 6

Challenge #6: "Never overlook a cliche" - Artem Zhitenev

Taken as part of the Street Photography Now challenge.For more info: streetphotographynowproject.wordpress.com/

The challenge this week asked us to 'never overlook a cliche' whilst photographing in the urban environment. This threw me. Was it better to be fully informed of the established cliches or to just go and photograph the really obvious? Well, studying photography for the past four years or so has instilled too much, I was aware of all of the 'cliches' that can pop up. I get the point of it though: there are still photographs to be had by using previously successful compositions... Not that we would reinvent the wheel by attempting cliches but they have become cliches for a reason.

In the end I went for the seasonal cliche of focusing on the dramatic shadows that winter's light can produce. Also, there is an established tradition of framing the natural world [trees] upon the manmade and industrial world [buildings] that had been stablished long before but perfected in the colour photography of Eggleston to Callahan - another cliche-box ticked!

I was tempted to opt for:

- Images that featured a repetition of colour...

- Images that used the obvious compositional traits. Such as adding a natural frame or border by including walls, posts or trees to create an 'edge' of frame. I prefer this image to my submission to the competition but the other photo fit the brief better.

-PM

[10/11/2010]