Film Still Assignment

 

   Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #48. 1979.
Collection The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

This assignment will ask you to think a bit like Cindy Sherman, whose landmark 1977 Untitled Film Stills project explored the conventions, clichés, and iconography of cinema from Hollywood and beyond. Each of you will create one still that will stand as a piece of a much larger puzzle: your imagined, unrealized narrative film.

This photograph should be designed in such a way as to lure your viewer into a drama by hinting at major aspects of the film’s style, plot, character, setting, mood, or narrative. In planning out this shot, you will investigate formal and ideological dimensions of the Hollywood cinema and counter cinemas by creating a film still that serves as single still from a scene in an imaginary fictional genre film. You can either recruit a model for your still, or use yourself as a subject. Or you can choose a design that does not include human subjects. While I want the image to be as professional and refined as possible, I do not expect any of you to have high-tech equipment or fancy cameras to complete it. Use what ever tools you have available and collaborate with other students to take advantage of either others' talents and resources. Once your still is complete, you should create a post on this blog where you will upload your photograph and provide a very brief caption to accompany it. Note that the required 1000-word explication need not be included on this blog. You will submit the explication only to the Blackboard SafeAssign drop-box.