Photography Analysis for the film poster and the magazine

cover

Celina Laureta

I began by taking solo shots of the female protagonist because I wanted her to dominate the film poster. ‘The Bonsai Tree’ is a story about contempt, loyalty and betrayal among other key themes; to illustrate some of these themes, I asked the model to showcase different expressions, hence why the majority of these photos are close up shots and mid-shots. I incorporated the prop weapons i.e. a sword and a gun, in order to portray her power and fighting abilities.

PROCESS OF ELIMINATION

By carefully looking at each photo, I eliminated multiple images that were test shots (the purpose of which was to double check the colour and lighting) but the main reason is because some photos were out of focus and blurry. Here are a few examples.

Other reasons include the models’ expressions which were sometimes inappropriate i.e. smiling.

EXPERIMENTATION: Angles, shots, and lighting During the process of the shoot I directed the other members of my group to hold up props and move the light reflector to create different lighting effects. I found the low angle shots the most challenging because I had to lie down on my back in order to get the models in one shot; as a result, some photos came out wonky. However, I was satisfied with the outcome I achieved.

James holding the sword

Chandler positioning the reflector

ME

In Japanese culture, the idea of beauty revolves around having clear, white skin and long silky black hair so using the ‘spot healing tool’ I cleared the model’s face of the baby hairs on her face and the redness of her blemishes to make it appear smoother.

I used the lasso tool to remove the background and experimented with a solid colour however it wasn’t appealing because the solid colour was not effective enough. The reason being there were already too many red parts in the image.

INSPIRATION

I deepened the contrast to intensify the darker areas such as the shadow around her face. Then I used a black and white filter to make the image look more dramatic.

Using the background remove tool on powerpoint, I carefully isolated the colour of the flowers on the kimono and deleted them. I placed the black and white version above the coloured layer to achieve the effect on the right.

Title and slogan

Actors names

Credits

I used the lasso tool on photoshop to give a white background and replaced the white background with a secondary image of a room adorned with oriental furniture from Google. I made the background darker to create an intense atmosphere which is juxtaposed by the colour yellow and the flowers in the vases.

I also tried different fonts and sizes to determine the most appealing one for the sell lines and the headline. I used the ink drop tool on the kimono to pick the colour of the font so it would compliment the other colours in the image.

I used two methods to darken certain areas. The one shown in the gif is selecting an area and dragging the brightness level down.

The second method was to use the paint brush with a soft effect and the colour black to darken certain areas like the top and bottom of the image so you can see the font more clearly.