Pennsylvania just as I remember it. Same weather even.A few weeks ago, I posted a new cinemascape that was inspired by a book I recently started by Cormac McCarthy (no country for old men). Then I read on Amy Stein's blog that the book has already been adapted for the screen and is opening this November. If you look at my image from a few weeks ago and the few stills from the movie I found, you'll notice I wasn't that far off from the look and feel of it. Only a great book can do that!
Spending 17 turbulent years of my early life in Pittsburgh (the inspiration behind almost all of my work), I was extremely psyched to read that almost all of the movie was filmed in and around my hometown in southwestern Pennsylvania. Although not suprising because as one of the director's explains... "... it’s one of the many states that give tax breaks and rebates to film companies and, not incidentally, because it offered such a pleasing array of post-apocalyptic scenery: deserted coalfields, run-down parts of Pittsburgh, windswept dunes."
Hmmm. Me thinks me should get back there for some shooting this fall? I only have a few images in my series that are from the burgh and one of those is my biggest seller... "steeltown" (pictured at left). I could easily spend a week or two shooting there with all the derelict places I used to frequent and reside.UPDATE: 6 Stills from this bleak post-apocalyptic thriller. click here.
2 comments:
Just back from King of Prussia, PA for work...have traveled about the state quite extensively myself having grown up just a few hours from Erie, PA in a small town just outside of Buffalo, NY.
In a previous job, I saw much of the worn/gray landscape during endless contract work that led my crew from one end of the state to the other. Your work captures the "grayness" that somehow feels like home to me...the same "grayness" that many people I meet from other places complain and joke with me about.
One thing I wanted to mention about your most recent c-scapes ("untitled as of..." and a few other fairly new ones you've shared)...I'm enjoying the open spaces and warped and/or distant roads...it does feel a bit apocalyptic to some degree...I think for me it's more of a strange sense of uncertainty created as part of each narrative that I like...you're at the mercy of "something" in these c-scapes that I can't put my finger on...it creates this great tension.
James
I think the tension James is talkin' 'bout comes from your ability to craft a single-frame story. Ultimately, Aaron, you're a visual storyteller. That's why I like them -- my mind runs free with possibilities. And there's no pretense or melodrama. Like a great story from Flannery O'Connor or the Coen Brothers or Terrence Malick... I can go on and on, of course.
Post a Comment