Real or fake? - 'The Returned' CD cover (4)

'The Returned' CD cover  

This CD cover is my submission for Assignment 4. I arrived here following two separate strands of thought- the idea for this CD cover and a concept for a paperback dust jacket for 'Servants' written by Lucy Lethbridge which I had just read and which had struck a very personal note for me.Both were interesting to pursue, so much so, that I took both forward to completion before deciding which one to send in as the assignment. Each idea was technically challenging in its own way and threw up a number of ethical issues en route.

I used a number of images for the CD cover.I took them a year apart but in the same place- a local pedestrian subway. The subway and figures are real but I manipulated the composition to achieve the composition, colour and 'atmosphere' and using Photoshop Elements and Lightroom software. The starting point was an empty subway which I 'peopled' with images taken from the other photos. 

So real images used to fake a scene representing a fictional situation in a fictional supernatural television series. The urban setting is recognisable and gives the scene credibility but software processing has been used to change the image into a more menacing situation. 

 I think that I am more comfortable with these changes in that the Cd cover is intended as an illustration - an interpretation of a 'fictional'  situation. It is not intended to convey or pass as a real situation. If we can go by just the intention here then perhaps this can be justified in ethical terms. But if we add in what interpretation people take away from the image not knowing this is a 'madeup' scene, perhaps thinking this is one of the city subways you would not choose to go down given its menacing 'feel', then this becomes less clear cut.


 And turning to my 'runner-up dust jacket..

Firstly, the image of the girl looking out at us, my grandmother, that I used was taken by another, unknown, photographer who cannot be credited. Given the age of this photo, can we assume it is out of copyright? Yes, I think so as copyright for photographs lasts for 70 years pma or 70 years after the work was first made available if the author is unknown.

While the image of the girl looks and is 'real', the overall photographic image is very obviously not real given the timescale discrepancy between the 'Edwardian dress ' and the items on table. So I can justify what I have used in the 'image' ? Yes, but I know that I have altered the Edwardian dress to provide a fuller skirt - is this justifiable in ethical terms as it is not obvious? Does it change anything other than help the compositional perspective? Does it alter the meaning intended i.e. how far cleaning and society has come since the girl standing sedately for her photograph spent her days as cleaning as a general servant. I think not.On balance I think I can justify this composition and changes made in ethical terms.

'Servants' dustjacket (3)

Firstly, this is going to be a paperback dustjacket. So I am looking at a smaller book and may well want to follow conventional marketing practice and come up with a totally different design.
Technically, I'm going to use two very differnt images- a digital image taken here in my home for this assignment (i.e. the gloves and cleaning bottle) and a scanned image of a very small creased black and white photo taken over a hundred years ago in poor condition mounted on cardboard. While the end result will hopefully be visually interesting, it may well have poor reproduction qualities...So..

First attempt:

 

P619

Looking to make the table appear more 'natural',I introduced a degree of perspective in P620. I used the clone tool to extend my grandmother's dress to seem as if it sat between the legs of the table.

P620

Then a different approach..this time in P621 making a more 'in your face' juxta position of images to contrast the images. Not sure this works that well ...too much out of sync...

P621

What difference does a change of background make in improving the visibility of image or purely from a marketing approach making the design more eyecatching on a bookshelf? I think this blue brings out the detail more than the sepia style version.

P622

In the end, I opted for a change of colour in the background but keeping the texture of the old photograph to retain the sense of its age. Adding in the title and author details produced two versions for the end result. I prefer the second one P624 as being more eyecatching with the all color background and larger image than the framed picture - a little reminiscent of the original jacket design.

P624

P632

However, the quality of the final result was poor. This was due I suspect to using a scanned version of the original picture of my grandmother which was poor quality. The scan was done a few years ago on a very basic machine with no regard to what use might be made of it in the future e.g. reproducing it digitally. There may be techniques that I could have used during this assignment to improve the quality here but I am not  sure what these might be ..a learning point to be pursued.

The Returned - image into cover design (3)

The final cover design !!

Looking for a way of of introducing a supernatural quality, a feeling of the 'unearthly', I turned to Lightroom to make various adjustments to P628 to conjure up the look I wanted...This is the starting point:

P628

 A key feature of the television story is the role played by a reservoir near to where the action takes place. As the water level in the reservoir mysteriously drops slowly over a period of time stretching across the storyline, there are an increasing number of incidents where people unknowingly dead turn up amongst the community. I wanted to capture this 'watery' connection through colour. I also wanted to give a sense of looking through an atmospheric 'veil'.

P629

P630

For P629 I decreased the temperature and tint as well as the exposure,highlights and saturation. I then increased the shadow slightly and adjusted the contrast (P630 ) adding in the cover titles for the final version (P631):

P631

I'm pleased with the end result here.

The Returned - creating an image (2)

So keeping in mind what 'feel' I want tp create and bearing in mind that this is a CD cover which needs to sell the recording, I've opted for one of the original images from last year; one with no people, as a starting point for the composition. This will introduce changes into the original 'real' image using 'real' images taken at the same time and a year later in the same subway....Will this be a justifiable interpretation? I believe so but will return and answer to this question more fully later. I shall play around with a few compositions and see what strikes a chord and best matches my aim here.I'm also keeping in mind the need to have some space within the composition for the  CD title etc.

Starting with P626, chosen for the compositional opportunities offered by the angle of the tunnel. I increased the exposure, contrast and saturation of the original image to create a more defined yellow colour to emphasize the artificial lighting..

P626

Using Photoshop Elements 10 (Magic extractor), I took two silhouetted figures from a photo taken at the same time with a different, narrower tunnel angle and added them in to create P627. I wanted to show figures in motion since the theme is about 'people' returning from the dead.

P627

Next step ..this time I went to the actual images taken for this assignment i.e the ones using the 'willing' model.Using the same Photoshop tool, I chose one silhouette again showing motion for P628 and then added in a fourth image for P629 ( one at standstill to suggest menace). 

P628

P629

Looking at these later images, I'm going to go for P628 as i think this looks the most menacing.

The Returned: a starting point for CD cover (1)

I'm not usually a fan of 'zombie' films but I really enjoyed the television drama series 'The Returned' shown at the end of 2012. The subtitled series was created by Fabrice Gobert for Canal+ and won an international Emmy for the best drama series....

'The Returned' is a supernatural crime thriller set in an Alpine village. It focuses on a group of men. women and children who  do not know that they have been dead for several years. I found the whole production very atmospheric almost eery deriving this feel not just from the storyline but also the quality of the natural light used in the filming and the evocative soundtrack.

So why choose to rework the CD cover for this soundtrack? One of the story lines featured a serial killer who returned periodically to the scene of his crime, gloomy pedestrian underpass. The underpass scenes reminded me of an image I took of a local underpass last year for my TAOP assignment on contrast.

P145: Dark

I always felt a sense of menace emanating from the dark silhouetted figure in this picture and think this could be a good starting point for the CD cover.  The original cover below features a crowd of shadowy figures emerging out of the grey surroundings - there is a sense of threat - you cannot see their features just sense their overwhelming numbers. 

P614: Original CD cover

What I want to do here is create an image which conveys the sense of menace visually ..the viewer being less an observer but drawn into the underpass location taking on the role of the pedestrian walking through a typical unwelcoming and 'lonely' location.

How to create my image?  

Without a cast of thousands, I went back to the local underpass with an idea to take a number of pictures that could work with my original image. I had one willing model to place in different places within the underpass. My intention was to find 'background' for the final design, one that either has an existing sense of menace derived maybe from graffitti or colour and lighting or the exact opposite i.e. an open, normal everyday feel to the sense of place. But I also wanted to create potential silhouettes for use within the final design..

P625: f10 @ 1/3  ISO 100 -1step  43mm  AWB

P625 above is one of the images taken ..it provides a clear sihouette and a sense of gloom and disrepair that might work...The white wall at the end is overexposed but gives a quality of light that will add a ' supernatural' element but I'm not sure whether the colours will work with what I have in mind. The image below taken last year might offer a better background colour.

P626

Why Marigolds - changing the image ( dustjacket design 2 )

So, where to start....

I want to convey how the life of a servant changed as the twentieth century progressed but have limited access to actual images taken ....no bank of National Trust images to drawn on!! 

So, how about inserting an object(s) into the original image which reflect / indicate how outside factors changed the world that servants inhabited and the work that they did. My paternal grandmother was described as a general servant in the 1911 census so would have done a great deal of housework such as cleaning.  
Looking at the original black and white photo and wanting to convey an over emphasised sense of period to enable a contrast image to be inserted drawn from a later period.

P617

In the image above (P617), I have changed the colour from black and white to a more 'antique' look and removed the creases in the cardboard mount; I also increased the contrast and clarity.This provides the 'feel' of history I'm looking for.

Next step is finding suitable 'contrast' images....

P618

Why Marigold gloves? These are a popular choice these days for protecting hands from the wear and tear of 'wet' housework and we know from reading Lethbridge's book that sore, chapped hands were a common problem for servants working in sculleries etc. They are also recognisably bright yellow.The timescale fits as I discovered that they were invented in the 1950s by the J.Allen Rubber Company based in Gloucestershire !! 
However, I discovered that the gloves alone did not work sufficiently well ..they could be thought to be just gloves even yellow gloves. So I added in a very obvious and distinctively coloured cleaning spray to highlight the cleaning technology aspect further...

So far so good....now I need to combine the images to see whether these ideas work at all.

Starting image: dustjacket for Servants by Lucy Lethbridge (1)

I'm looking for an image that conveys the theme of Lucy Lethbridge's fine book. This is an account of those servants who worked behind the scenes during the twentieth century - unseen and very often unheard,  the story of their fortunes working away in middle class kitchens and parlours and in country houses from the turn of the century to the 1970s.
Both my grandmothers started work as servants in middle class homes and the concept of being 'unseen' comes over to me in my memory of my maternal grandmother's story of being told she would be called Jane as all the parlour maids were called Jane in her new employer's household.

The photograph for the hardback dustjacket below comes from National Trust images. It carefully reflects the servant and and employer relationship in a setting that hints at change i.e. the motorcar.

My access to period servant type images are restricted to two family photos which could be used but would need too sit within a composition that hinted or reflected the changing history of servants. Again and again the book returns to a story of gradual change charted across the a century that saw the gradual decline of large country estates, two world wards that drew in both men and women servants  and the inroads of developing new technologies.  

Looking at the two family photos, I have decided to try a few ideas out using the one of my paternal grandmother for a number of reasons.

Firstly,  the image strikes a chord in that my grandmother is dressed in her Sunday best an outfit that her employer would not regularly see or have control over unlike her servant clothes. She is looking directly out at the 'viewer' ..to me this is saying 'this is me - I am a person in my own right', this at a time when employers did not treat their servants as individuals, were not interested in them as people, in their lives other than thier working life within the household. This comes over in the book but also echoes my maternal grandmother's stories of her time in service in a middle class professional household.

Secondly, there is space within the composition for me to insert 'images'  to create a jacket design which would relfect the content of the book but also draw the eye of a prospective purchaser..which after all is what jacket design is all about..

Workflow for Assignment 4

Here's my workflow plan for this assignment :

• Research

        1 Initial research into primary source material i.e. dustjackets and CD sleeves. I 
           am continuing with my first two ideas of reworking of the following:

•  Jacket design for ....

                  What ideas suggest themselves my reading of the book?

• CD cover design for ......

                  I think that it helps to have watched the actual television series -in 
                  remembering the programme I'm looking for any ideas that suggest a 
                  different concept for the cover design. 

          2 Research into possible locations for photographs / props for shots / post shoot     
             processing techniques

• Preparation 

      Will use a range of equipment :  DSLR / tripod
      Programme in time for location shoots if required 
      Processing  - allow more time than usual for processing images  - allow more time   
      than usual as wider range of software processing techniques may be needed- some 
      unfamiliar.

• Processing 
• Editing 
• Retouching
• Creation of dustjacket / CD cover 
• Archive images to harddrive and portable location  
• Print / upload finished item to memory stick