The exam theme simple or complex initially drove me to look towards visually interesting films by directors such as Wes Anderson, Wong Kar-Wai, Quentin Tarantino and Jean-Luc Godard. Through looking into the processes of how these directors created such beautiful, visually striking films I realised the process was more difficult and complex than I had thought- for example Wes Anderson’s scenes run on a metronome with the camera panning/something happening at every beat, many of his scenes (as seen in the screen grabs of “Moonrise Kingdom“ below) have complete symmetry.

I was drawn to Wong Kar-Wai’s “Fallen Angels”, especially to its aesthetic of bright lights, dramatically emotive cinematic frames, unusual perspectives and grainy quality. From researching this film I came across the photographer Wing Shya who had worked with Wong Kar-Wai as a photographer on numerous film sets.

From first reading the theme simple v complex, I wanted to explore cinematic images as I am particularly interested in films and directors which have a specific style- making this project one that matters to me as I have been interested in this style of images since starting the course. When looking at artist references I eventually settled on Wing Shya and Claudia Andujar as while researching them I found out they specialise in documentary style images which look staged and cinematic. I intend to start this project by just taking images- starting at football matches which my friends play in working on making the images look cinematic and getting the settings of the camera correct and then moving on to different types of lighting and settings- possibly experimenting with staged images. For my presentation of images I am planning to put them on foamboard with no boarder- if my images are cinematic style enough then a frame for the images may take away from the image itself- this will add to the “simple” theme of simple v complex. I may also create a CD or DVD case with my images in it: as my images are going to be in a cinematic style then I would like to display them as a professional, formal outcome which is related to the idea of cinema or just media in general- therefore a CD cover may be the best option for this as it is accessible to do as many DVD covers have the design imprinted on them but plain CD covers are accessible to me (and films obviously have soundtracks) so I feel as this may be the best option for me.