TraceyMeagher.com

Here’s another photomanipulation I did recently.  I’m not too keen on this one, only because it’s a little too angelic and ‘pretty’ for my taste but when I start an image I often have no idea where it’s going to go and I guess this one strayed off my usual path.  I’ve called it the lonely time-keeper and maybe the idea is that she is an angel charged with keeping watch over time. And the minutes tick by slowly.

For those of you are aren’t sure what photomanipultion is, let me explain quickly.  You take some photographs and edit them (cutting parts out, changing colours, adjusting shapes)  until they create a completly new image.  It’s now considered an art form in its own right, as to do it well you need to have the same understanding of light and form, perspective and composition as any artist has.

Working on this image for instance, I created some textures for the background, edited the girl (see original photo below), by changing her skin tone and texture, altering the shape of her face and her lips particularly to make her look more angelic. I painted her hair and added in stock photos of her wings, along with the balloons, birds and the watch.  I also added some lace textures for her dress straps.

Here’s the original photo I worked with to create the image.

The image took about 6 hours to complete (with breaks for munch and so on).

When doing photomanipulation, all of the elements need to blend seamlessly for the image to work.  You need to pay special attention to adjusting the colours so that each element works in the image. Hope you like.

The Lonley Timekeeper : Copyright Tracey Meagher 2011

Share on Facebook

I wouldn’t have thought much of Ridley Scott’s 2006 production of Tristan and Isolde if it hadn’t been for Rufus Sewell’s performance. Why don’t we see more of this guy? Not only is he gorgeous but he can really act too (check out the video below for proof!!) James Franco was okay but I’m not a huge fan.  I find his acting a little bland (maybe I’m biased after sitting through 127 hours and feeling like the film took 127 hours to end!)

Sewell was captivating as the kind and vulnerable, yet brave and heroic Lord Marke of Cornwall.   Ultimately he is betrayed by his wife Isolde and his ward, Tristan, which is all the more tragic because never has there been a man more deserving of love.  It’s corny but it’s true.  Lord Marke is so loved by his people and essentially a very decent guy (having lost his hand in battle to save Tristan who was then a child and then taking Tristan into his care and favouring him over his flesh and blood, his nephew Melot).  It’s all just too sad and tragic for poor Marke.

I can’t imagine anybody having suited the role as well as Sewell.  He also gave a great performance as the very odd, but very brilliant biophysicist, Dr. Jacob Hood in Eleventh Hour (which was unfortunately cancelled) .  Here’s hoping that we see Rufus again in the bigger roles he deserves.

Here’s a clip of what is probably the best scene in Tristan and Isolde.  What a gorgeous scene that draws you into the heart of a man suffering in love. That doesn’t happen too often in the movies !

Share on Facebook

I spent the last couple of evenings watching David Yates’ 2001 adaptation of  Trollope’s, The Way We Live Now.  I loved it. David Suchet is riveting as the devious but very charming,  Augustus Melmotte.   Shirely Henderson as his very odd, but ultimately likable daughter, Marie, is also superb and with stellar performances by Killian Murphy and Matthew MacFayden, the whole production is captivating from beginning to end.

The story has all the period drama necessities, top hats, cinched waists, and all sorts of dilemmas about love, marriage, wealth, social standing and reputation.  Think Jane Austen with a great big dollop of comedy.   Trollope obviously had a great sense of humour and has spilled this into many of his characters who at times can seem like caricatures rather than fully developed personalities.  But it works.  Sir Felix (Matthew MacFayden) is a lazy, immatature mummy’s boy, who gambles what little money his family have and plots to marry the very wealthy’s Melmotte’s daughter, Marie.  Of course, it all goes wrong, largely due to his pathological and childish self-centredness (and his gambling addiction too,  as he gambles away the money Marie gave him for their elopement).

Marie, who at the beginning of the series is to all appearances a spoiled and unhappy young rich woman, tolerated by her mother and beaten by her father, is for me the true heroine of the story.  Ecstatic at having at last found in Felix what she believes is a man who truly loves her  (as she is not the prettiest of girls) she shows herself willing to sacrifice everything for their relationship, including her fortune.  Felix being a superficial ‘blackguard’ ultimately rejects her and Marie finally sees the truth but in the process has grown into an independent and mature young lady.

What Trollope does brilliantly that is lacking other writing of his era is develop plot.   While he deals with the issues of social standing, love matches and wealth, by bringing the money hungry, unscrupulous Melmotte into the story along with Paul Montague’s plans to build a railway, he creates an intriguing plot that ultimately leads to the downfall of Melmotte.

Being an Englishman working in Ireland (and with a love of the Irish) Trollope understood the concept of stranger or outsider.   Originally, Trollope had planned that Melmotte’s character would be an Irishman.  Given that the Irish were largely despised by the English at that time, this would have given the character less chance of being accepted in London society.  As it happens,  without specifiying Melmotte’s nationality (but suggesting Eastern European, perhaps Hungarian), Trollope managed to make the character a crooked, deceiving but oddly likable man, who can attract the company of English ‘society’ because of his wealth.  He is not without charm and like all good con men has ample self-confidence.  But as Melmotte himself said, he stayed too long in England.  He enjoyed being an ‘English Gentleman’ too much and finally he became the victim of his own deceptions .

The portrayal of the Melmotte’s vulgarity (as foreigner unfamiliar with the etiquette of society), particularly through their eating habits adds fabulous comedic value. David Suchet, manages to portray Melmotte as almost animalistic.  The noises are at times like a tiger purring, and the these sounds made while contemplating especially suggest him as a person to be feared.  Suchet portrays the character amazingly.

Ulitmately, the stranger fails and the Englishman triumphs.  Melmotte kills himself while laughing insanely at the irony of a portrait he commissioned which sees him in a typically English, aristocratic pose. Montague, who was largely responsible for exposing Melmotte’s scams triumphs and builds his railways.   All of the loose ends are tied up when it comes to romance and love and even Sir Felix, banished by his mother’s new husband (and financial saviour) manages to maintain his gigolo habits while in some strange and foreign country.  It is ironic that Trollope ends the novel with Felix, the Baronet and gentlemen, becoming the stranger, in a country where title (which is all he had in England) means nothing.

There is so much more the the story than I have managed to tell here. I suggest, if you like period drama that you watch it.  Suchet is the real star and I guarantee, you will not be at all disappointed.

Share on Facebook

I was left feeling flat, unemotional and uninspired after watching Never Let Me Go, a bit too like the main characters in the movie!  The film is based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, famed for his purgative need to under-state and while the subtley that defines his work has translated well in his other movie adapted novel, Remains of the Day (Anthony Hopkins having just a little to do with that), I don’t think it worked in Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go.

Opening in 1970′s England, Never Let Me Go is set in an alternative reality, where cloned humans are conditioned from childhood to accept their fate as future organ donors.  Their sole purpose is to prolong the life of the non clone population who can now live to be over 100.  When the story opens, we meet the three principal characters, Ruth, Kathy and Tommy, as children and students at Hailsham, a school that on first appearances is nothing other than a typical English boarding school.   We soon realize that this is not the case with the arrival of Miss Lucy, a teacher who struggles with the deception, eventually revealing to the children the true purpose of their lives.

The sudden revelation during class of the desolate life of self-sacrifice they are destined for, should have been one of the more disturbing moments of the film.  After all, these are children who laugh, play and bicker like normal children, who strive to express their creativity and and form childhood crushes.  But it failed to make an emotional punch,  largely because the children’s muted reaction gives us nothing to empathize with.  Their suffering is not explored.  They have been groomed for submission at Hailsham and yet beyond the gruesome stories designed to keep the children within the boundaries, there is nothing that suggests how this brainwashing occurred.   As a result, the viewer is justified in asking, why don’t they just run away.The film falters in it’s unwillingness to express the inner struggles of the characters.  At moments, it seems like they don’t have any.  As a result the viewer is kept at an emotional distance, forced to understand events for the most part, cognitively, rather than viscerally.

Despite the complications of the love triangle that develops and frames the movie, the characters are ultimately too passive to be tragic. For the most part, they refuse to struggle with their own flaws and fail to put in any fight against their oppressive destiny.  And when they do, it seems contrived.  When Ruth (played byKiera Knightly) acknowledges her lifelong jealousyof Kate, and the  subsequent pain it has caused her friends, her words of regret seem empty and harsh.  It’s difficult to feel anything for her despite her weakened state.  She is so accepting of her distorted destiny that when she finally ‘completes’ (the clones expression for death as a result of too many organ donations), there is no grief.

Only Tommy is full of anger.   Early on in the film,  we see him in a screaming rage during playtime, much to the confusion of the other children,  and later again when he realizes that he and Kathy will not get the ‘defferal’ on transplant donations that they believed those in ‘provable’ states of love got.   Tommy’s rage is heart-breaking and finally triggers our emotions.  He must surely be screaming for the anguish, the loss, the suffering, the injustice, the powerless, the incomprehensible mess that is their lives.

Perhaps the subtlety,  the muted colours, the unwillingness of the movie to move into our emotional space serves a purpose.  When Tommy screams, if we listen carefully enough we might just hear the echo of our own anguished screams.  After all, is life so different for us?  We are powerless to fight against the inevitability of our own death.  We accept it without argument because we have to.  Significantly, the authorities that control the growth of the clones and schedule their death (via transplants) are largely invisible.  There is no source of power to be angry at, nobody to blame.  It’s not so different for us. By the end of the movie, we come to realize that we share the characters plight.

There are no heroes in Never Let Me Go.  Nobody wants to root for characters who are not rooting for themselves, who shrug their shoulders at fate and passively embrace its inevitability.   The medium expects that from somewhere within the narrative, somebody will emerge with a will to overcome the oppression.  The final punch comes when we realize that Never Let Me Go is about life and death and just like the movie, none of us are heroes.

Share on Facebook

How did the rabbit get into the bottle? With the help of Photoshop of course. This is another piece I did a few months back, during my ‘take time out to get arty’ phase. Obviously this girl is a little demented and doesn’t really deserve to have a pet rabbit. Let’s pretend the rabbit gets out in the end, or maybe it’s an illusion and he’s not really in there at all! I like how odd things are in this image. It took me a couple of days to complete, only becauseI was really stuck when I tried to think what I could put in that bottle.

I gave this girl a sort of fun and crazy hair style. I think it lightens the mood of the image a lot. I really have no idea what the story behind this image is but it’s interesting to look at and I really enjoyed working on it.

Share on Facebook