Rankin Video - Shooting the Hollywood stars

To fit with our recreation shot and give us some idea about how hard it might be, and the work we will have to put in to it, we watch a documentary about the photographer Rankin and some work he was doing re-creating old hollywood shots.

http://rankinfilms.com/documentaries/#v-3565

The video showed that even though he might be a renowned photographer and have a hard working team behind him it's not as easy to recreate a shot as you might think.


The thing that stood out to me was that when the original photograph was being taken, the lighting and model were flexible in their positions, the process could be more candid and adaptable. However, when recreating the lighting, recreating the pose and recreating the angle, the process becomes more rigid and strategic.
To get the lighting and pose the same is much more difficult, as you have to stick to what has already been done, but with an original shoot there are no strict conditions angle, pose or light.

Rankin used his current girlfriend as the model for this shoot, and she commented on how uncomfortable it was to try and hold this particular pose. the bottom image is a still from the film and not the final photograph. 

The other point I think is important to mention, is it's not just the pose, lighting and angle that you are trying to capture. The attitude and/or emotion of the person in the image is just as important, if not more important. It doesn't matter if the image is the same if the model can't portray the same emotions as the original. It won't look the same. 

To go to the next studio lighting post, please click here