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Depiction of photographers in movies/TV

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Mr Jones. I haven't seen it yet, but it's on my list.

Further to this, I have now watched the film. It’s a slow but moving film about Stalin’s Soviet Union and the Holodomor in Ukraine, but don’t watch it expecting it to be about photography or a photographer. The camera (a Barnack) appears just twice, very briefly.
 
You might add the 1940 Hitchcock film "Foreign Correspondent" where a raft of press photographers take shots of the Dutch Prime Minister with what appear to be Speed Graphics except that one( the assassin" ) is taking a shot with gun hidden in his hand by a double dark slide also in his hand

The interesting points for me are 1. The authenticity angle i.e. would press photographers have been issued with U.S press cameras?
2. The well thought out scene of a gun hidden by a dark slide was a scene made possible by such large cameras and be ímpossible now or even in the 1960s onwards

The above was first brought to my attention by a former member AgX on another thread several years ago

Oh and its worth a watch as a film if you have never seen it

pentaxuser
 
A character in the movie “Putney Swope” by Robert Downey: Mark Focus. A photographer who wore a speed graphic on a strap around his neck. (Scene)Looking for work:
Focus: (showing his portfolio) I did this for G.M. This for IBM. This for CBS.
Swope: I know your work Focus, you’re the best in the business.
They begin negotiating. Eventually Focus says he’ll do it for nothing because “I need the work”
 
I watched the movie pilot for the 'Ironside' TV series the other day. There's a scene with Ironside asking for his job back (in a restaurant with the Chief of Police) surrounded by a press pack. Everything from 4x5 press cameras to 35mm, and I think an 8mm cine camera. Bizarre. Must have cleaned out the props department!
 
I watched the movie pilot for the 'Ironside' TV series the other day. There's a scene with Ironside asking for his job back (in a restaurant with the Chief of Police) surrounded by a press pack. Everything from 4x5 press cameras to 35mm, and I think an 8mm cine camera. Bizarre. Must have cleaned out the props department!
Maybe it was a Bell & Howell 16mm. Newsrooms used those all the time before videotape.
bell_howell70dr_prop.jpg
 
The wonderfully entertaining "TV Tropes" database has a very good page on how photographers are being portrayed in movies:

 
Wim Wenders. He loves photography and one of his heroes was a photographer in a film - can't recall which
 
Wim Wenders. He loves photography and one of his heroes was a photographer in a film - can't recall which

Palermo Shooting!
German rock star Campino with a Makina 67.
Also a pano camera at the beginning of the film (Noblex?).
 
UK TV is forever making the mistake of using safelight( always red) to indicate any and all kinds of film developing work


Recently I watched an episode of a 1950s/early 60s crime series where a film was being developed in a daylight tank under a red light.

Might it have been an ortho film?- possible but unlikely at that time. What made it worse however was they examined the film still under red light

pentaxuser
 
UK TV is forever making the mistake of using safelight( always red) to indicate any and all kinds of film developing work


Recently I watched an episode of a 1950s/early 60s crime series where a film was being developed in a daylight tank under a red light.

Might it have been an ortho film?- possible but unlikely at that time. What made it worse however was they examined the film still under red light

pentaxuser

Red safe light has depicted darkroom work in motion pictures for many, many years. However, what the actors do under that light is a good indicator of the technical comprehension of the implied process by the image maker.

It is like when you hear a motor drive sound dubbed-in over the image of a clearly manual SLR in a program.

Those who know, laugh.
 
UK TV is forever making the mistake of using safelight( always red) to indicate any and all kinds of film developing work


Recently I watched an episode of a 1950s/early 60s crime series where a film was being developed in a daylight tank under a red light.

Might it have been an ortho film?- possible but unlikely at that time. What made it worse however was they examined the film still under red light

pentaxuser

Maybe they were using print film to make a copy of a negative, maybe to get some slides. If so it would make sense to work under red light and examine the film under red light, after development but before fixing to check if development was sufficient.

"The untouchables" also have a photographer, but he ain`t a main character of the film. He is there sometimes with a Graflex, but is handling the camera proper as far as i recall.

Oh and there also is a movie with Danny De Vito where he is playing a photographer in the 50s - he is developing his sheets in the trunk of his car (at night) to be the first who can sell his picture to the newspaper. But i cannot recall the title of the movie, maybe it`s already in this list here.
 
There is a darkroom scene in Louis Malle's "Ascenseur pour l'Echafaud" (Elevator to the Scaffold). However, I can't remember if you see the pictures actually being developed and printed under safelight, or if it only shows the characters entering the darkroom after the prints are made and the lights can be turned on. The photos are an important plot element but they're taken as snaps by major characters in the course of events, not by a "photographer" as in someone whose raison d'etre is photography. The movie is black and white so you wouldn't get to see the safelight color.

I'm not too bothered by red safelights in films or showing operations that you would normally do in total darkness. Movies aren't literal depictions, they create an impression to represent events (this underlies Eisenstein's theory of montage, for example). It does bother me more when they make factual howlers that are lazy. For ex, when Wes Anderson mocks up a camera that never existed, it's in service of the Wes Anderson world that isn't quite real, but if you were to see a press photographer with a modern SLR in a 1950s movie, it's just breaking the illusion unintentionally.

P.S. I forgot perhaps the most interesting part of the photo lab in "Ascenseur pour l'Echafaud" - it's at a roadside motel, and this is taken as perfectly normal. Did motels (in France anyway) often have photo labs so that travelers could drop off their snaps for quick turnaround? Who knows?
 
"THE VILLAGE ALBUM" is a 2004 Japanese film.
It was supervised by a real photographer, so there is nothing strange about the way the photos were taken.
 
"Oh and there also is a movie with Danny De Vito where he is playing a photographer in the 50s - he is developing his sheets in the trunk of his car (at night) to be the first who can sell his picture to the newspaper. But i cannot recall the title of the movie, maybe it`s already in this list here."

L.A. Confidential
 
Yes he also is in L.A. Confidential, but this is not the movie where he is developing sheets (in L.A. he is not using a large format camera i think) in his trunk - also he is not the main character of L.A. Confidential.
The movie i mean he is the main character and is using a large format camera (and he survives the movie).
 
Nope, that's not it either. He's using a Nikon F and has a dark room in his aparment.
 
No, the movie i mean takes place in the 50s, has normal length - and judging by DeVitos age must have been shot in the late 80s or 90s. I just tried to find it, but it must be a rather unknown movie - i only seen it once on TV...
 
A couple off the top of my head. Closer with Julia Roberts as a photographer. Sticks in my head because IIRC she uses a Leica way too close. Also The Unbearable Lightness of Being. One of the main characters is a photographer.
 
The recent (English) "Professor T" has a scene in a red lit darkroom with reminiscing older characters making portraits on film in the darkroom. Sometimes with the (Pentax?) camera just a couple of inches from the (perfectly focused) subject. Duh. But: the red light erases a lot of wrinkles.
 
The recent (English) "Professor T" has a scene in a red lit darkroom with reminiscing older characters making portraits on film in the darkroom. Sometimes with the (Pentax?) camera just a couple of inches from the (perfectly focused) subject. Duh. But: the red light erases a lot of wrinkles.
The English version of Professor T is blasphemy!
 
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