Annotate Your Scene

Audience: The intended audience for my photographs is the same audience that would watch the Elvis film. These include both casual and die-hard fans of Elvis. The audience may also include the fans of Baz Luhrmann and his visual style. 

Intention: All four images combined tell a story. I intended to recreate the "trouble" scene from the Elvis film. I want the audience to feel the same excitement his fans clearly do along with the same distress Elvis presents when he rebels against the police. It is meant to show how Elvis defies the rules.  He still dances the moves that the black community has taught him and spreads this black culture and music to his fans against the wishes of the Confederates.  My images show a narrative arc. The first image serves as an introduction and shows Elvis performing to his audience. The second image serves as the rising tension and shows a Confederate police officer watching Elvis defy his rules of no black or sexualized dancing. The third image serves as the climax and shows the love Elvis fans have for him. The final image serves as the conclusion and shows elves being arrested as a result of the performance. 

Make: Elvis is the main focus for my images, any photo without Elvis is there to tell a story and add context to the photos with Elvis.  The background is supposed to look like a stage/live performance, I used the limited people I had to fill background seats and act as an audience in order to make this performance feel more packed. I used props such as a microphone, stage lights, and costumes that fit the era and characters. The stage light was an idea I took from my reference photos, however, it also acted as the lighting for most of the images. Bottom-up lighting was used for all photos that showed Elvis. I wanted Elvis to always be artificially lit as he would at a concert. I used less light for the image of the general as I really wanted to emphasize the anger/disappointment he felt while watching the performance. 

Method: Due to low lighting in the theatre I had to increase the ISO on my camera to make it more sensitive to light. Many different compositional tools can be seen in my four photos, most notably leading lines, rule of thirds, balance, and filling the frame. When first deciding how to recreate the photos I first tried to recognize what compositional tools were already present. Once I had identified them I went on to recreate the images using the same compositional tools to try to make them as similar as possible to the Elvis photos. A challenge that I had whilst shooting was trying to figure out a way to make the photos feel packed and crowded while only having a handful of models to work with.  For photos where I needed a crowd I just had to use everyone I had. But for photos focused on either Elvis or the general, I used the same models but didn't show their faces to give the illusion of more people.  While scouting a location for the concert theme photos I decided the drama theatre would suit best. I used a circular platform to act as a stage with a curtain in the background. For the pictures that showed the crowd, they were either on the drama theatre floor or seated in the theatre seats.  

Edit: Due to time I was unable to edit my photos. All the photos you see are in their raw and natural form. If I were to edit the pictures I may have upped the exposure for the first image so that Elvis was easier to see, I also may have edited in a larger crowd, edited time-accurate props, and edited the background to better suit the concert theme.