AN ARTISTIC JOURNAL OF EMPOWERED CREATIVITY
If you’ve spent even a little time in the film and photo world you’ve probably heard someone throw around the phrase “wow that looks so cinematic!” While film and photography ultimately have their own desired outcomes when it comes to aesthetic, making an image look and feel cinematic really comes down to one thing they both share: creating visual depth.
It’s been a while everyone, but I’m breaking from my nearly year-long abyss of silence to talk to you all about the value of approaching filmmaking as a photographer. That’s right, the blog is BACK BABY!
There’s a lot of contention in this space. People like to identify as either photographers or film people and honestly I don’t understand why. As someone who’s come into filmmaking from photography (and before that theatre) there’s a lot of things I learned as a photographer that have helped structure my visual aesthetic. Perhaps for better or for worse, but that’s for you to decide. Yay, you!
Anyway, moving right along. Thinking of scenes as a series of interwoven images is SO HELPFUL in mapping the conflict of characters and the story. In fact, thinking of photography as a way to summarize a scene in three words or less has helped me depict subtext, moods, and themes without saying anything. Composition is a helpful tool in directing; it’s just as important in photography as it is in filmmaking because without focus drawn to your subject, the action and thus the story is lost. Finding ways to manipulate the environment and your subject to amplify visual motifs or remove objects/elements that detract from the scene can help your work be more intentional.
For example, take this frame from a recent music video:
There’s a lot going on everywhere in the room and it’s easy to lose sight of the action in the subject. However, in using the metal staircase in the left of the frame to close off the empty space from wandering eyes, you direct focus to the subject in the scene. Similarly, the three touchpoints of yellow created by the flowers, the back of her hair, and the reflection in the staircase on the left-hand side enclose the subject in a golden ratio. This composition doesn’t just use shapes, but color and light to guide the eye and personify the inner life of the character. Working with metal, glass or any surface that can bend and distort light is a great way to reflect color or create distortion.
The same is true for this shot, composed with just natural light:
In many ways, this framing is more informed by 19th century Romantic Era paintings than any particular photography style, but the principles of composition still apply. Even though you don’t see the character’s face, you still get the story. A woman dressed in plain clothes looking out over a sunset blockaded by vacant luxury development. And yet that story is largely told by the lines, shapes, and colors created in the scene. You see the parallel of the woman and nature characterized by the blue in her jacket and that in the sky. You see her presence disrupting the lines created by gates and the rooftops of luxury apartments. Just by using the relationships of all the lines, colors, and shapes in the picture with the subject, you get a sense of conflict.
And that is the point. Photography is all about revealing the conflict of different objects in their environment. Within spatial relationships, there is drama, and being intentional about how to create and sustain these principles while you work with moving images will help you build conflict in whatever story you're telling.
Every story you are ever trying to tell has conflict. The principles of composition and framing, lighting, and color are tools that you— the filmmaker— can use to depict the inner life of your story. So use them! And don’t get caught up in whatever camp you’re in whether you’re a filmmaker or a photographer— you can be both!
I was riding on a cramped subway car in some lonesome claustrophobic tunnel on the fringe of Brooklyn when burly looking men in camouflage and body armor approached a mother, a father, and their child. The mother and daughter huddled close to one another while the man brokered in broken in English with the agent in charge. Using what little words he knew, he tried to defend himself against the barrage of increasingly hostile questions from the agent. It escalated— they began shouting, the man was forced up against the plastered blue interior of the G line train while he was handcuffed, underscored by the screeching wails of his daughter. The man was forced out of the train, bound between two arms and assault weapons. We were yelled at by guards, now swarming the train to ‘stay the fuck away’ and to ‘let them do their work.’ The mother & her daughter were ushered outside another door of the train by a second pair of agents as the doors of the subway quickly shut closed and the memory of violence lapsed beneath the metronomic drone of fluorescent lights. Except I haven’t forgotten.
The year was 2018 and it was the first summer the current administration began its aggressive ICE raids in New York City. Over the course of that summer, over 300 immigrants would be arrested and detained in ICE raids conducted in NYC.
Since that day, I’ve played over that moment a thousand times in my head. I exercised an immense amount of privilege in not stepping off that train to be with that family, a decision that has come to haunt me as one of my biggest regrets in life. But in the moment I didn’t know how; it was as if my entire body were paralyzed.
Those living with privilege must be pushed beyond the bounds of comfort to empower justice and equity for all people. The number of deaths, detainees, and separations at the border, the number of people of color killed or incarcerated every year by law enforcement, the number of working people living without a home or stable finances— these numbers are real and they matter. And while data helps illustrate the severity of injustices in this country, it doesn’t always help people understand why they should care.
But stories can.
There are a scarcity of platforms in this country where vulnerable communities can safely transcribe their experience of disparity without being objectified. Rarely do marginalized communities get the opportunity to champion their narrative. Their likeness is capitalized in films, broadcast in headliners, and weaponized in politics while the cycle of suffering persists and they reap little fruit in its wake. Injustice thrives when it is allowed to remain unseen. In building platforms of communication that represent all people equitably— whether they be in media, in art or education— we can protect communities targeted by hostile policy.
That horrific day on the subway has become a tectonic motivator in the work I’m doing today. Stepping away from acting, I’ve come to recognize that there is an opportunity to help use my privilege to create those equitable platforms in media for communities divided by disparity.
For the family— I know I cannot roll back time and make a different choice. All I can do now is use my privilege to shield targeted communities and empower platforms that elevate the voices of vulnerable demographics in our society.
I’m 25 and I’m jaded. Not in the romanticized Tumblr sense of the word— most mornings I wake up and look at how much of the world is on fire and truly wonder what the hell I’m supposed to do about it and where to begin. It’s exhausting— and my privilege shields me from nearly every aspect of injustice in this country so I can’t even imagine what it’s like to live under those injustices. Nevertheless, they exist and so I fight, in whatever means I can.
The more I’ve worked in the nonprofit space, the more I’ve come to realize that it will be the bravery of individuals coming forward who will be the initiators of change. We’ve seen it with every major movement throughout history and we are seeing it now. But there’s a lot of work that needs to be done and many more people need to step up before we get there. As Americans, we have a habit of tuning out noise that isn’t immediately in front of us. We may get lit up over an issue but the flame carries only as long as a headline and we are constantly having to rebuild momentum. It is the culture of consumption and the way in which our lives have been sifted into an algorithm that keeps us in a tailspin.
A quick digression: The founders never intended for a majority of people to be able to vote. They were pretty despicable aristocrats who were more interested in the self-preservation of the social elite then they were in promoting democracy. It bothers me every time anyone romantically compares the vision of the founders with an equal and representative republic because that wasn’t their goal. Unless you were a white man who owned property, you were someone else’s property. Let’s just get that clear: The principles of this country were made in such a way that the rich and powerful would always be in a position to protect and represent the rich and powerful.
Fast forward to today where, because of the bravery of individuals coming forward with a vision of a better world, we stand to have more rights, more representation, more autonomy. But we must fight to keep it. We must educate our leaders—whether they be our representatives, our CEOs, our neighbors— that action speaks louder than dark money. We must remind the people in power that they work for us— not the other way around and that, if you choose to act, you can also be an initiator of change. Donate to a nonprofit you think is doing good work, call up your rep, report injustice, register to vote for god’s sake— if we do not step up to act then there will be no change. We cannot be bystanders anymore.
