Work Record March 19th 2013

Preparation;

The purpose of this shoot is to get images of me as a zombie and looking normal. This is to show the contrast between the dead and the living. To show the contrast effectively, I am going to create an animation.

The image on the top relates to what I plan on doing as it is natural and normal, which is what part of my shoot is going to be, as I want the contrast to be strong and obvious. The image on the bottom relates as it is showing zombie/dead makeup and the model looks lifeless. 

To prepare I need to;

• ·         Plan makeup ideas
• ·         Book studio
• ·         Plan any specific poses

What I hope to achieve;

By the end of the shoot and editing, I hope to get some good photos that I can put together to create an animation showing the change from “human” to zombie.

What I actually achieved;

I am really happy with what I achieved with this shoot, as I effectively got two different shoots done in one – one normal and one with zombie FX makeup. I chose to use a dark background to make the makeup and expressions stand out more, and because black goes with both ideas I was showing in this. The poses I done were obvious dead zombie poses, natural smiley and poses and shut eyes so the transition between human to zombie would be smooth. As this was exactly what I wanted and needed to do I did not try out other ideas. I did how ever try out being close to the camera and further away which created more shadow which was better for the zombie photos. When editing, I focused primarily on creating the animation rather than the editing single images.

Animation;

For the animation, I kept the editing really simple and chose to keep the colours natural for the natural shoots, but then the images showing the zombie idea I decided to make my skin seem whiter and greyer, and make the blood more vivid. I did not need to edit my eyes as I was wearing white out contacts. When choosing the correct images, I had to choose ones that were similar sizes and composition to make the transition smooth, but when I was layering them, I did use free transform to size them to fit better. As this is my first animation, I am really happy with the result of this. 

The animation can be found on this link here; 

http://alicesophiephotography.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/zombie-animation.html

For this edit, the idea behind it was “everybody’s got a dark side”. To show this idea, I decided to use a natural image and keep it natural by just perfecting the skin and making the eyes stand out more. To show the dark side I layered one of the zombie images on top and turned the opacity down so that it was visible but not overpowering. This shows the idea I want well, as it looks like the “darker side” is fighting though or just slightly visible.

For this edit I wanted to just focus on the zombie side, and make it seem more “early Hollywood zombie movies” style. To achieve this I added noise to distort the image and make it seem more vintage. Before I added the noise, I made the reds brighter and the white on the eyes whiter. I then desaturated the colour a bit, but not so much that the red was not vivid.

What I am going to do next;

As I am really happy with the result of this animation and shoot, I am leaving this idea now. But I do plan on revisiting the idea of life and death with the zombie theme as it is one of my favourite and most fun ideas to shoot, create and edit.