i just bought this movie on dvd, and i noticed that every single picture that is on the back of the film case are pictures of things i never saw when i watched the movie.
then, i went online and i noticed that there are plenty more pictures of things i never saw in the movie. is it just me or was this cut down immensely? did anyone else notice the same thing?
JustLivin4God:
I work on movie sets as a Unit Stills Photographer so I can tell you first hand about the photographs you saw on the box and scenes in the movie and why they don't match up.
Today we shoot stills during production with a 35mm film or digital SLR housed in a metal box lined with sound absorbing foam made by Jacobson Photographic Instruments. http://www.soundblimp.com/ This allows the stills photographer to capture scenes as the actors are actually emoting in front of the movie camera without the noise of the SLR mirror and shutter being picked up by a microphone.
But the problem with this procudure is the still photographer is limited to angles and cropping because he can't interfere with the production. We also try to shoot rehearsals when the movie camera is not running. That way we can try to work closer to the actors and capture angles not possible during filming.
The goal of the stills photographer is to try the story of the scene in one brief moment that's so good newspapers and magazines will print them in order for the public to be so interested they buy tickets.
With the cooperation of the actors I often try to restage scenes for the stills that tell the story of the scene because often the director has the actors spread apart to fill the horizontal movie frame. But as a former photojournalist I know there is a better chance the shot will be used in magazines or newspapers when the actors are closer together and/or the photo is designed as a vertical.
Other times the producers want the lead actors together in a shot where they really are not in a particular scene in the film. This is so the publicity department can send the photo out to various media outlets with the stars in one shot.
By the way, publicity stills now and in the past never are taken as a frame from the movie camera. That's because the movie camera operates at 24 frames per second which often results in the actors being blurry. That's fine for a movie but not for a publicity still.
Seventy-odd years ago back in the 1930s when "Grand Hotel" was shot the studio's still photographers were working with huge and heavy 8x10 sheet film cameras on wheeled stands, not the handheld cameras we have today. Frequently after shooting a scene the director would yell "Hold For Stills!" and the photographer would roll in his camera, stick his head under a black cloth to focus, arrange the actors and click off a couple sheets of 8x10 black & white film. And because the film of that era was not very sensitive the exposures were long - like 1/2 second so the actors had to "freeze" so the image would be sharp.
So with all this said, that's why the scenes on your package don't exactly match what you see in a movie. And most likely never will.
If you have any more questions, please ask.
Terry Thomas
Film Unit Stills Photographer
Atlanta, Georgia USA
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1669504/
Website: http://TerryThomasPhotos.GooglePages.com
Thanks for that great explanation. It's great to hear about this from an expert and from someone who knows the history!
shareThis was an interesting piece of historical information on a subject I for one had never given any thought to.
I imagine tho that the advent of digital movie making in the intervening years since this post was made, makes the claim that stills 'most likely never will' be lifted from actual 'footage' a bit short sighted.
Not a criticism I need to stress, but technological improvements make statements about the future hazardous.