Connecting Essay 1:

- My picture - Disney photo-series by Annie Leibovitz

My image above was taken from the first exam shoot I did this year. It was inspired by Disney’s The Little Mermaid, and I used my friend Jess as the

mermaid. In order to portray the theme of fantasy, and to make the portrayal of the film realistic, I used a combination of costume and location to re-create it. I

took the images at the beach in Clacton, as I wanted to be able to include the sand and the sea within the images to add more realism to the shot. I also used a

variety of different coloured and textured materials to create a costume that reflected the real character from the film that inspired my shoot. During the

editing stage, I selected the background and de-saturated it to make the emphasis on the character.

Annie Leibovitz has been working with celebrities for a period of time now on her series, Disney Dreams. For her Snow White shoot, pictured above, she used actress Rachel Weisz as the model, as her pale skin and black hair reflected the appearance of the character in the film. Working closely with everyone in the

team who works at the Disney parks, she acquired a proper costume that perfectly replicates the character’s outfit, whilst she used a forest location and animals to perfect the scene that closely mirrors scenes from the film. She also used the natural sunlight through the trees to highlight the model, making her the main focus of attention, slightly dimming the background, as this was less

important.

Annie Leibovtizs’ Disney Dreams was actually the inspiration behind my Little Mermaid shoot, hence why there is a strong similarity between the two photos, despite them being of two different characters. She had done a photo-shoot to reflect the Little Mermaid, but I didn’t think the representation was as good as other works she has done, hence why I chose that particular Disney character. Our photo’s are similar in the sense that we both used costume and setting to add a sense of verisimilitude to the image, making a true representation of the

cartoon characters as real-life people. We both also used techniques to separate the model more from the background, to make the character the main focus of

the viewers’ attention – the colour in the costume in both images has been made a lot brighter in comparison to the background, which also adds that cartoon-

esque element to the image. The costume and setting is also vital in both images to help make the characters identifiable – we both used models who reflected the characters’ appearance, whilst I captured the waves in my image to show that we

were by the sea, and Annie used animals in the frame to add to the forest location’s set-up.