The Series Every Photographer Should Be Watching.

recently I made a video titled 10 movies that all photographers should watch and on the comments and also quite timely on my social media I got a lot of messages of you guys asking me to watch Ripley because it was really so good and actually I had watched the Ripley already um and I realized with your comments and messages that I should actually make a video about this show and why photographers and creators should we put it to way filmmakers writers whatever you are um should watch this show because there's a lot of things that we can take from it and I'm only going to scratch the surface here with this video but I highly recommend you to watch if you're interested in learning um and exploring the things that I'm going to be talking about this video a little bit further so I want you now to relax grab a drink make yourself comfortable and let's find out why should we watch Ripley in 2024 now let's answer a few basic question questions what is Ripley and what's it about well Ripley is a 2024 limited series currently streaming on Netflix based on Patricia he Smith's 1955 crime novel The Talented Mr Ripley which is actually part of a series of crime novels collectively titled the ripot they revolve around a fictional character named Tom rley who for a time was struggling to make a living in New York City resorting to some petty crime in small scale scams however Ripley's circumstances changed once he is hired by a shipping magnet named Herbert Greenleaf who wants Ripley to persuade his son Dicky who is currently living in his artistic quote self- exilent in Italy to return home and join the family business however Tom's acquaintance with dicki becomes quote the first step into a complex life of Deceit fraud and murder now the million-dollar question is why should we watch this show so I actually am going to divide the video right here we're going to be talking about visuals first Aesthetics um influences lighting contrast and whatnot and then we're going to be talking about structural points um and that could be uh the Rhythm uh could be also a very important thing which is how much information do we give to an audience and meaning and intention and all of those things that I feel like are super important so I think right now is very timely to probably dim the saturation here and I think this is probably okay right now because we're going to talk about black and white all eight episodes are entirely shot in black and white and it Sy mography style is actually quite playful and I use the word playful because it's a style that really plays with a lot of elements such as deep contrast details proportions angles and what really is impressive mive at least to me is how much quality is in this show at least in my own experience you're never going to cease to be amazed or at least be intrigued to see what the filmmakers are going to pull on next and that's also why I say it's a surprising style because at every corner of every location the placement of the actors the way the scene is lit is truly a master class and truly an interesting watch and that is why I would also call this cinematography style quite bold bold in a sense that for the general Netflix audience this show might appear quite crafted more sophisticated if you will and I love that Netflix is embracing different and highly stylized content like this now I also love reading the words of Steven Zen the writer and creator of the show that both he and cinematographer Robert ellworth quote knew from the beginning that we wanted to have this high contrast film Noir style we didn't want to do anything that was familiar to us I personally didn't want to make a pretty travel log which sets the tone for much of what we're about to discuss and see elswit talks in interviews about employing quote film Noire lighting which is generally made of a key light that is used to illuminate the subject or a given spot in a space while adjacent lights are placed intentionally and diffused to create specific Shadows or only showcase certain important details details on screen although I would also argue that this isn't just film Noir Lighting in fact when I was watching the show certain scenes reminded me almost of hrand lighting with certain close-ups to the actors and the early German expressionist movies of the 1910s and 1920s so I was actually surprised to see my suspicions confirmed when the cinematographer of the show called this shot right here the show's own noser shot anyways when we look at some of the night scenes as well they're so dark and bold visually speaking it almost reminds me as well of the photography of Eugene Smith and he very famously said when called out by critics for his very dark photography quote you can actually see what matters and that is true for Ripley here the darkness is intentional to the darkness of the plot to the crimes being committed to the driving Madness at the core of the main character and still on this topic of filmire lighting we cannot forget one important reference that is made during this show and that is the painting of mikelangelo kajio and personally I couldn't be more pleased when this reference was made and the scene in which it happens is actually very interesting and very important I don't want to give any um spoilers or anything like that but I feel like um the scene where um inspired by carao Tom actually adust just the lighting um really is a massive shout out at how important light is and how the the also the um different roles that light can have it can be expressive it can be dramatic it can be also intriguing ambiguous so all these things um deceiving as well I feel like that was the role of light as well in this particular scene so I feel like this is super important and also um if you want to probably de dive deeper into kaji's work it really is worth of your time he has a particular technique of kiar skuro I actually feel like maybe we should do a video about it here on the channel I know a lot about kajio because I've studied I've made work um you know like writings on him before for college and for other things and I'm extremely extremely familiar with his work and how he worked um he was a very troubled individual but a genius at the same time so if you want to see a video about that let me know that below and yeah I think that we're going to close on this note and dive into other areas of Ripley that I think can be so important to study now angles are very important as we all know and I recognize in Ripley particularly in some scenes the use of very high or low angles which I would entirely agree here to be a very Noir influence my opinion though is that these are Essen itial in promoting the complexity of Ripley's situation and the plot he concocted as time goes by in fact because we're so close to Tom Ripley at least for the first six and a half episodes and his point of view for most of what's happening there it's almost like we're following him into this Labyrinth of lies and deceit that is metaphorical but at the same time Visual and palpable and this can also be inferred through the visual symmetry of the various existing shots showing us Tom and the other characters through shelves and other barriers put between camera and characters now one of the most fascinating aspects of this story and this is beyond the scope of the show for me this is about the story itself uh you know the book and Etc is the idea of touching um identity and in this case the idea of double identity or double body double if you will double personality I think we can tie this with a German doubleganger um and which I think in German stands for double um and so a double of the self a double or you know a double of something right and so here of course we have the idea of Ripley and um Dicky being the doubles and I think this is super important to talk about because I wanted to uh tell you at least how I perceive receive that the filmmakers communicated this um through Visual language now just a little disclaimer if you haven't watched the show up until now then skip the next section of the video because in order to make my point I'm going to need to give you a little bit of a spoiler so in essence during the show we see Tom Ripley assuming the identity of Richard Greenleaf we can take this for face value and understand that this was a kind of Life Tom had Ambitions to live but could only do it through Dicky ident and access to money but the visual language of the series also suggests this idea of Tom being Dicky's double or doppleganger rather than just a separate entity through the many shots that display this idea of Duality whether that is through the framing of two different figures the idea of using multiples on screen and the idea as well of using mirrors and Reflections I mean in the first episode this is given a lot through the idea of Reflections in Windows in particular so maybe I'm reading too much into it but I just feel like watching this series really helps understanding how we can convey our intentions or aspects that we want to highlight in a certain project or photo one of the biggest criticisms that I've seen the show receiving online is particularly tied with rhythm and the criticism is that the show can be quite slow moving now I for one feel as though slower paced suits The Narrative and the visual Style but I can also understand that many people might not appreciate this but then my argument is if the Rhythm was much faster the impact and the playfulness of the visuals would probably be much smaller or we probably would really not appreciate it as much because it would just be so fast and I say this conscious of two things this show is extremely good at highlighting first we have to talk about meaning and intention and how detrimental these are to know exactly what the story is about and how are we going to tell said Story how these two promote a Clarity over the materials we're dealing with and then second how important it is to be measured with how much information we communicate or divulge in a single piece or photo or scene or page if you will whatever Medium you're working with I believe there's a fine line that separates the Creator from the viewer and that is not only made by the object or images that we create if you will but how much information they contain in order to shape the viewers interpretation of a scene or image when we look at Ripley though we can quickly recognize a dominant ambiguity that begins at the very start this is suggested by the scale of certain shots the proportion of certain spaces the proximity of the characters to the camera and thus to us the viewers so I hope this you know light discussion has been helpful to you in any way shape or form but to close this video off I actually want to give you a bonus quote unquote or a tip or a suggestion if you will um since this video was made as of course out of your guys' suggestions as well uh there's been several adaptations of The Talented Mr Ripley the you know the book and I wanted to actually I think the most famous one has been uh the one with John malovich and Matt Damon and John malovich actually makes an appearance um in Ripley kind of like you know short brief appearances um here and there um but one of my favorite adaptations of this tale has actually been um with Alan Deon playing uh Tom Ripley and that was in the 1960 a version of this story that was actually titled purple noon masterfully directed by hene clemon so if you want to watch it um I definitely can leave links to it down below I think it is part of the Criterion Collection so you might be able to find at the Criterion Channel if you're over in the US and Canada but yeah I guess that it's all for today I won't take any more of your time which by the way I'm very grateful for taking your time to watch this video I really appreciate it more coming very soon so you know take care stay safe keep shooting keep creating keep learning photography and I'm out peace [Music] d [Music]

Channel: Tatiana Hopper

Views: 65,084

Keywords: Photography, photographer, film photography, tv series, ripley, Netflix, street photography, street photographer

Id: 32DUGFUY3-0

Length: 13min 41sec (821 seconds)

Published: Thu May 02 2024