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Everyone is talking about still/motion convergence, so I thought I would mention one still photographer who stands out and has successfully made the transition.

Greg Williams started his career as a photojournalist working in the world’s trouble spots such as Burma, Chechnya and Sierra Leone. Later, when he realised that working in war zones might get him killed he began shooting photo-essays, documenting social issues for magazines such as The Sunday Times Magazine and Time. He now says photojournalism still informs what he does, whether he’s shooting on set or in the studio.

In 1997 Williams’ career took a new direction when he persuaded the Sunday Times Magazine to let him shoot a photo-essay on the great British film revival. Over the next three years, and after visiting the sets of over 80 films, the project evolved into his first book, Greg Williams On Set.

More on-set work followed, and now Williams is well established as an on-set ‘special photographer’ as well as a celebrity portraitist. He has shot portraits of stars such as Catherine Zeta Jones, Brad Pitt, Daniel Craig, Colin Farrell, Cate Blanchett and John Travolta for magazines including Vanity Fair, Premiere, Esquire and Italian Vogue. ‘In my portraits I now use the same lighting found on film sets, and recreate compositions from my reportage. I also encourage actors to perform rather than just pose. In that way the portraits and reportage have started to converge as one style.’ Williams says.

Williams has also shot posters for some of the world’s biggest movies including Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace. He tries to avoid digital trickery, preferring to shoot against real backgrounds and use in camera special effects than add these elements in post. ‘I like the photos to retain a realistic look where the brief allows,’ he says.

His background in photojournalism also influences his lighting style and he prefers to use natural light if possible, adding lights only when he needs to build and shape his subjects.

Shooting on big movie sets has led to big fashion and advertising assignments such as Dunhill, Tommy Hilfiger and Lacoste, where he uses large crews. ‘You need to have good people and you need to prepare. A big shoot takes days of preparation and it’s not unusual to have 60 people on a set by the time you have clients, publicists, agents, stylists, hair and make-up artists, props, special effects and all their assistants. It’s huge and the pressure would be terrifying if you had a minute to think about it, but luckily you don’t.’

http://www.vimeo.com/11878267

Megan Fox “moto” cover for Esquire magazine

Never one to stand still and always wanting to push the envelope, Greg Williams is embracing the still/movie convergence with a format he dubs the “moto”. Filming a subject in a static pose and then getting them to move. He has already done this for the last Bond film, Quantum of Solace, where he brought Daniel Craig to life on an electronic poster using a RED camera and recently the first ever moving cover magazine for Esquire, especially for the iPad.

We all know you can’t pull stills from video, but Williams says, with the RED’s high resolution RAW footage, you can use stills from it as double-page spreads. He also says his moto images are set up like stills so there’s no real difference. Not surprisingly, he was the first photographer to use the camera this way, shooting a story for Italian Vogue.

He’s now experimenting with the Epic camera (a prototype was used to shoot several shots in his short below), the latest offering from RED, which delivers a whopping 5K, yes that’s 5000×5000 pixel images, and which Williams got involved with during its development.

What next for this talented photographer who is always looking for new challenges? Well, he says, his ambition now is to make a full length feature film.

Take a look at this narrative short he shot and ask yourself, has he got what it takes?

http://www.vimeo.com/12067022

‘Tell-Tale’ a short film by Greg Williams

I recently visited Shanghai where I saw the Chinese premiere of ‘Ten Thousand Waves,’ at ShanghART Gallery, a film by UK video artist Isaac Julien. It is a nine-screen installation shot on 35mm film and transferred to HD with 9.2 surround sound and filmed in Guangxi Province and Shanghai by top Chinese cinematographer Zhao Xiashi. It stars actresses Maggie Cheung (In the Mood for Love – Wong Kar-Wai) and Zhao Tao (Dada – Zhang Yuan).

I mention this because more filmmakers/artists, outside mainstream Hollywood, are exploring different ways to present their narrative pieces to increasing visually sophisticated audiences. The film ran for about 50 minutes and during that time different images appeared on different screens, but not all at once. It was hard sitting in one place, as you could not see all the screens, so I moved around and amongst them to see as many images as possible. My eyes were constantly flitting from screen to screen trying to take in all the rich images, as I was hungry not to miss any. It was an exhilarating experience, visually exciting with each screen shouting for your attention before the images changed or moved to different screens. If you find yourself in London anytime between October and January 2011, go to the Hayward Gallery at the Southbank Centre and see it, you won’t be disappointed.

Issac Julien is a British video artist known for his provocative works that explore gay and black identity. Born in London’s East End he studied at Central St. Martins College of Arts and burst into the mainstream with 1989’s ‘Looking for Langston,’ a moody black and white drama loosely based on the life of gay jazz poet Langston Hughes during the Harlem Renaissance. Nominated for the Turner Prize in 2001, he has produced everything from installations to documentaries and dance shows and continues to challenge preconceived notions of how we consume film and art.

“All my work has involved an element of documentary actuality, combined with reconstruction and fictional elaboration.” Julien says.

His most recent work has focused on China with ‘Ten Thousand Waves,’ prompted by the drowning of Fujianese cockleshell pickers in Morecambe Bay, Lancashire in 2004.

The film took three years and a Chinese cast and crew of 100 to make, and mixes documentary, fiction and poetry in three narratives, jumping between past and present, rural and urban, real and imagined, to give the viewer a dynamic visual experience on nine screens of China’s cultural journey to the present day.



Maggie Cheung in Isaac Julien’s ‘Ten Thousand Waves’

What do you get when you bring together an Oscar nominated film director and award–winning painter? You get a multi-media installation that centers itself around a narrative painting.

Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann and painter Vincent Fantauzzo, both friends, collaborated on ‘The Creek, 1977,’ which was created especially for the recent ART HK 10 fair held in Hong Kong. The work comprises of a large Caravaggio-style painting hanging in a blackened chapel-like setting of a young man apparently being rescued from a car that has gone over a bridge. By engaging the audience in much the same way as a scene in a film does, the two artists are inviting their audience to ask, is this the beginning or the end of the story and the all important question, what happens next?

“A lot of classical art was narrative…you have to get a lot of stories in a single frame,” Luhrmann says.

The painting was created in much the same way as making a film, with storyboards and casting well-known actors to appear in the image, which also featured Luhmann and Fantauzzo.

Narrative paintings have influenced filmmakers since the early days of cinema. Way before film, paintings depicted scenes from classical history, mostly religious and historical, that invited the viewer to engage with the painting and wonder at the story unfolding within the frame.

Usually, the title of a picture is the only indication of what the story is about, by inviting the viewer to imagine the situation; the painter hoped they would get the full story for themselves.

The principles that the painters employed to depict a scene were picked up by film directors and played a part in influencing the approach to staging and composition of early cinema.

For example, the diagonal layout of action in ‘The Creek, 1977’ creates dynamic and strong composition and depth, which guides our visual search, allowing us to discover a great variety of postures and facial views as the scene reveals itself.

Luhmann and Fantauzzo used pockets of light as well as a sound track of ambient sound and voices in their installation to guide viewers through the scene and add emphasis to the most important parts of the picture.

The convergence of art and commerce continues with David Lynch’s new film for Christian Dior, Lady Blue. Shot in Shanghai and starring French actress Marion Cotillard, it is typical Lynch combining high style with film noir lighting and effects, as well as a haunting soundtrack. This short film is part of the “Lady Dior” series and features (read product placement) Dior’s iconic handbag. It is the third film in the series of mini-features and advances the storyline of the first short online thriller Lady Noire, directed by Oliver Dahan (La Vie en Rose). Part two went online in January: Lady Rouge, directed by music video and film director Jonas Akerlund.

This is not the first fashion film for Lynch. Lynch was dabbling in this way back in 1988 when he directed an advert for a Calvin Klein fragrance in which he created a cinematic mood devoid of heavy-handed branding. Since then all manner of film directors from Ridley Scott to Baz Luhrmann have directed ads for the top fashion houses.

Lynch believes in ideas first and that ideas will appear a little different each time you pass them through a different machine, be it a still camera, video or film. Lynch continues to ask the same question through his work, “What is art, what is film?”