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Written by: Maeve Graham

I have been fascinated with film since I was little (You can thank star wars for that) and as time went on my love for it grew. Now today I’m a video production major who cant stop ingesting good movies and shows, and probably thinks too deeply about it all.

I genuinely believe that a cinematographer is a true artist, along with anyone else who works on a film/tv production (for the most part). A movie is a gigantic work of art from what can be 6-600 people. My true interest though lies in the visuals, it makes a movie to me. Like Spectre in the James Bond series, the movie, storywise, is not good, but the visuals are what make me watch it over and over. The man to thank for that is Hoyte Van Hoytema, and he is a true artist.

He grew up in Switzerland and later moved to Poland to attend film school. Which he tried many times to get into, but was rejected. Until he got into the “Lodz Film School” in Poland. Where he left without a degree, but with many film credentials. He worked on small documentaries from there, gaining traction in his area. It wasn’t until he worked on “LEt the right one in” that he got his international recognition. From there he has grown astronomically and helped produce some of my favorite movies.

He is a man of subtlety when he shoots, he likes to highlight the characters but is so careful to never overexpose them. more often than not his light source is off-camera and is so precise you wouldn’t even notice. Which I guess is his whole “thing”, he portrays the way he thinks the scene feels so well that we can’t help but feel it with him.

Her, for example, its set in a futuristic world where the main character falls in love with his operating system. Hoytema felt that the future would feel warm, almost like you’re in a dream, rather than what we usually imagine as cold and harsh. He thought it should be soulful, warm, and tactical, so eliminated almost all blue lights, using only red or yellow (or some mixture of them). It made the whole movie feel very intimate, which is exactly as it should feel, its about love.

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He worked so incredibly close with others and was so meticulous about what he used that he got perfect shots. For the shots below he used an LED lightbox so he could achieve the perfect lighting without having to use post for it. He always tries to do everything practically, its never the same if you rely to heavily on post-production. Along with that he used an Alexa on set, which is a very clean digital camera. Its especially good at handling low light, which is perfect because night scenes often need the most work in post. The camera worked well with that LED light box and helped create some beautiful scenes.

(It’s worth noticing that the visuals were inspired by Rinko Kawauchi, the Japanese photographer whose work captures pristine moments from everyday life.

He started working with Christopher Nolan when he created “Interstellar” which as a story is already fantastic, but add the visuals, and it’s phenomenal. The same goes for “Dunkirk” Which is one of my personal favorites, That was filmed on 65mm IMAX film, most of the time the heavy camera was strapped to his shoulder making it already hard. Which impressive as is, but mix that with harsh weather and handheld action sequences and you’ve created something amazing. That movie is just a visual showcase of his talents, that also happens to be about WWII.

 

Hoytema describes his idea for the film as, “We wanted people to be immersed in the situation, in the terror. Disorientation is a very important emotion in those kids on the beach. You’re constantly bounced out of your comfort zone, and not being classic in your storytelling helps convey that feeling.” so with that he strapped the film camera to wings of dogfighting planes, and periscope cameras to pilots. All the while using natural lighting for his shots (As much as he could), making the whole experience as realistic as possible. Though he tried to film it all handheld when he could, finding those made the best shots for the film and portrayed what he really wanted for it. He constantly thanks his Key Grip who made sure he didn’t topple off a boat or run into actors, thanks to the heavy film camera.

While Id considered Roger Deakins and Robert Richardson for this project, they were a bit too well known. Roger Deakins has literally done everything (most recently 1917) and Robert Richards worked on almost half of Tarantino’s films. I loved the subtle nature of Hoytema and his genuine love for practical effects in film. His incredibly stunning style is so driven by emotion it makes me want to go film anything I can. He’s been an inspiration for past and present projects. I deeply respect his detail in light and color and I will be seeing anything he makes, Ad Astra is next on the list.

Trenton Doyle Hancock was born in 1974 in Oklahoma City, OK and was raised in Paris, TX. He earned his BFA at Texas A&M University, Commerce and his MFA at Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Philadelphia. One of his accomplishments was being featured in the 2000 and the 2002 Whitney Biennial exhibitions- this being especially notable with the fact that he was one of the youngest to ever be featured in this event at 26 and 28 years old. His mixed media pieces focus on building a narrative that is part autobiographical and part fictional. He draws inspiration from his past experiences, history, and numerous pieces of fiction. Hancock uses color, language, and pattern to create and further develop his characters, sub-plots, and symbolic meaning in his story.  His compiling of experience and fiction “result[s] in a complex amalgamation of characters and plots possessing universal concepts of light and dark, good and evil, and all the grey in between” (jamescohan.com). He often depicts tales from the Bible in his paintings, and mixes moral dilemmas with wit and “a musical sense of language and color” to “create a painterly space of psychological dimensions” (art21.org).

As to why I chose to look at this artist, I was originally drawn to him due to sharing the same name as my little brother. I, of course, did look at his content before choosing to use him for my project and was fascinated by his colorful and textured pieces. He was one of the few (mostly) 2d artists that I could find, and the first one whose art appealed to my aesthetic tastes. Also, his choice to focus on the story behind his piece further drew me in, as I believe having story and meaning to a piece is the most important part of the art process. Overall, his artwork is outstanding and well deserving of the awards and features he has received.

https://art21.org/artist/trenton-doyle-hancock/

Antony Gormley is a British sculptor and draftsman who was born on August 30, 1950 in London England.

Antony attended Trinity College In Cambridge for a degree in art history, archaeology, and anthropology. Gormley’s interest in making art continued throughout his degree as he found paid work painting murals for university balls, nightclubs and private parties. In 1971 he had saved up the money he earned from his college gigs to be able to travel to India as well as Sri Lanka. Antony returned home after three years. When returning back to London, he attended the Central School of Arts and Crafts, Goldsmiths College, and the Slade School of Fine Art. Some of his first sculptures were based off of the homeless people that he would see sleeping in the streets around India and Sri Lanka.

Antony’s first major breakthrough came in 1981 with his creation of “Bed”. The sculpture was the size of a double bed made entirely from bread bed stacked on top of one another. The center of the bed has two body like carvings out of it. They were actually eaten by Antony himself to replicate his own body.

He would then move onto creating figurative sculpture made from lead. he would later abandon this project though because he realized the lead was poisoning him. He then began making body castings during this time. He would use his own body as a “spiritual signifier” for all people, particularly when multiplied, as seen in works such as Three Ways, and Land, Sea and Air II. His wife, Vicken Parsons, Would become his primary studio assistant around this time.

Vicken would help Antony cover his entire body with plastic food wrap and plaster in a grueling and lengthy process of creation. This would set in motion some of Antony’s most famous work.

Antony has won many awards for his art throughout the years and I think that this is because his art brings something unique to the world of sculpture. One of Antony’s more recent endeavors was short term with figures made from delicate tangles of wire or geometric blocks that fit into one another like a puzzle. these are what attracted me to his work. Theres a mixer of modern elements as well as classical elements.

He has also moved into the realm of technology for one of his most recent works that was a collaboration project with Priyamvada Natarajan who is an astrophysicist. Lunatick,  a virtual reality experience that would allow viewers to fly over the surface of the moon.

Ansel Adams was born February 20th, 1902 in San Fransisco, California. In 1915 he was taken out of school because he despised the normal routine of the educational system, because of this his father bought him a season pass to the Panama Pacific Exposition. This was a crucial phase in his life that led him into later on pursuing photography.

He actually considered himself more of a musician, a pianist first and a photographer second. In San Fransisco he was locally renowned as a great pianist but he new that this talent could only spread his fame locally. That was until 1927 Ansel Adams took, or as he would like to say made, his first acknowledge photograph at Yosemite National Park.

Adams was presented with this opportunity to make this portfolio when his mentor Albert Bender challenged him into photographing large format landscapes of mountains. He excepted the challenge and his results set a trajectory for what he would continue to photograph years to come.

For example, in Clearing the Winter Storm he again returned to Yosemite; he often photographed there. With many landscape photographs there isn’t just one subject, you’re meant to see everything. But they often have place’s of focus and attention that then lead you to exploring other parts of the scenery.

With the black and white photography done by Ansel Adams a main challenge that he addressed, aside from the moving around the large, awkward equipment, was that the viewer will never be able to feel the same emotion he felt. This is because of the loss of color, but in that he gained much more with having such huge principle removed from the equation. It was clear that communicating to audience couldn’t be done through color, therefore narrowing the focus and telling the story differently through things like line, repetition, pattern, value, texture and symmetry.

The reason work done by Ansel Adams resonates with me is because the photographs he makes felt like they were worth taking. In photography you have the ability to eternalize a moment that was only meant to last a second, but you can’t truly recreate that moment with a camera. So, in order to come close to that you must use precise compositions to show the audience why that moment was worth eternalizing. Every piece by Adams you can feel his desire to capture a moment even though he knew he’d lose the color yet still successfully give you enough of a story to tell for yourself.

Work-cited

http://www.zpub.com/sf/history/adams.html

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-photograph-made-ansel-adams-famous

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ansel-Adams-American-photographer

Julie Mehretu is and Ethiopian/ American painter. Julie was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1970 and came to school in the United States. She claimed her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design, Providence in 1997. Her work mainly composes of large scale murals that are charged with her feelings on certain topics.

For example, her piece Politicized Landscapes is an abstract piece that has multiple layers to the process. She begins with blurred photos that give her a sense of how she wants to start. She prints those out large scale and stapled to the canvas. I love that she uses the photos that inspire her within the art but blow it up to where it is not blatant. After the photos are placed, she begins meticulously marking it as it feels. The work ends as a powerful and chaotic piece that comments on the hectic political climate. Using the blurred pictures as the color sets the tone as calm but fire-like.

Her pieces consist of various marks, lines, and shapes, creating high, explosive energy that is simply eye catching as the next line leads to another line or shape. looking at it as a whole provides a different experience than looking at it bit by bit.

I chose Julie because of her dynamic shapes and colors that make it stand out. Usually I prefer people within the pieces because I can connect an emotion to a face or to body language. However, in her artwork I see a visual representation of emotions using random shapes and lines. I believe it is because she says she takes how she feels about the topic and goes from there. She is finished when she feels she’s finished; there is something interesting about that. To me that communicates feelings are very in the moment just like her brush strokes.

Julie Mehretu is an interesting artist that I am glad I found. She has provided me with a new perspective on art. My taste mostly consisted of humans and expressing their emotions through facial or body expressions. I see now that a human form is not needed to express such emotions, it can be abstracted into chaos rather than put into a bodily expression.