Photoshoot for Poster

Today I undertook the task of doing the photoshoot for my film poster. I decided that I only needed two people for the photoshoot, one of those people being me and the other person being the one behind the camera. First of all I had to think of the appropriate scenery for the photoshoot and after thinking of a location I decided to do the photoshoot during some free time. There were things whilst doing my photoshoot that o had to keep in mind whilst doing the photoshoot for my poster:

-Target audience: Whilst shooting I had to keep my target audience in mind and take appropriate images that were not to graphic so it would go against my rating of the film but also interesting enough to create a sense of mystery and temptation to know more when my focus group look at it. I believe I achieved this in my photoshoot as I managed to produce images that were not graphic and created the exact effect of mystery and tone of horror suitable to what i labelled my film as which was 15.

For all the photographic work I do it is essential for me to consider the following basic artistic principles as it will allow my work to have more meaning and and look that little bit more professional

-Lighting and depth of field: the lighting of my photos are key in my case as I want to create a dim, dark feel to my photos to convey the sense of mystery to my target audience. I got a great production tip from my A2 textbook which should help me with this hurdle.

Production Tip : getting your back light right- use the back light control on the camera to adjust the lighting, and make sure that the camera is not facing the main light source. Then think about the symbolic effect you want to achieve and make sure your lighting set up reflects it. IF YOU HAVE SHADOW IN THE SHOT, IT SHOULD ONLY BE BECAUSE YOU WANT TO CONNOTATE MYSTERY OR GUILT OR THREAT.

I believe that the lighting in my photoshoot was a very experimental thing as I tried various lighting, such a torch and figured it didn't work out as well as i hoped. So as a change of plan I changed the lighting and found out I would be easier to edit the lighting effects later on when I am constructing my work on an editing program. the main focus of the lighting was to give a depth of field to my pictures, so I focused the dim lighting on the top half of my body and saw it worked to greater effect. Part of testing out different lighting, caused some images to have shadows, which created the effect I wanted according to the production tip, but later found the looked very odd and could cause slight confusion and a lack in the quality of the photos along with taking the focus of the main part of the image, I SEE U, as it made it unclear and hard to read.

For the depth of field of my photo's, I had to undergo research as i wasn't really familiar with this term. I found out the key words involved in the depth of field within my photo's.

Production Tip: Depth of field- this is very complicated, but at a simple level it is about it is about how much you want in focus. The larger the aperture (a hole ore opening whereby light travels through) the more 'shallow' the depth of field ( the part of an image that looks exceptionably sharp in comparison to other parts of the image). So you use a shallow depth of field if you are focusing attention on a specific part of an image. the larger the aperture number the shallower the depth of field will be. So choose a larger aperture for more detail at the 'front' of the image, and a smaller aperture for an image where everything will be in focus, but the eye will not be drawn to any one detail in particular.

I believe i achieved the correct depth of field in my photos. I also experimented with different aperture and depth of field in order to see what the images looked like. For example, the ones in the dark with just the light of the torch shining didn't turn out as well as the others. The focus of attention was the 'I SEE U', and so i mainly focused achieving this focus in order to get the type of image i wanted.

For the photoshoot,  I got into the costume of a shirt that was back to front to create the image of a mental institution jacket and a white blindfold with the words 'I SEE U' written in fake blood. The colour scheme I chose gives a nice contrast of the theme of white being Innocent and the colour of the red fake blood giving an eerie, ambiguous effect. I also messed up my hair as it was appropriate for my character as he is a mysterious and self-reserved character.

I feel that the photoshoot was a very productive session and I went through a process of getting both images that were categorised as usable and the test shots with the torch, which didn't come out so well but it is all part of my process where I tested different types of lighting and depth of fields. With these images I aim to be able to construct my Film  poster, editing my pictures appropriately in order to get the best product out of my photo's. I hope to complete the photoshoot for my magazine cover by the end of this week to as it will be very similar to that of the Film poster.