Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens

Annie Leibovitz is a renowned American photographer, so when I was scrolling through my on demand movies and i saw a documentary available that followed her around and focused on her work over the last couple of decades I immediately knew i was watching it. The documentary was shot in three different ways. The premiere way was with an average pan/ tilt sort of way. It featured cameo's from famous people she had photographed over the years so it was like still shots of people talking about their experiences with Annie. The second way it was shot was with footage from her childhood. Apparently, her mother, Marylin, was heavily involved with documenting their family through mainly video. So the producer and director of the documentary decided it would be useful to use this raw footage of the Leibovitz family, while the kids were young. It was especially interesting because they moved around often and their car was the only constant in their life. Her mother said they "saw the world through a ready made picture frame, which was the frame of the car window, that was how we saw the world". That statement was especially powerful because while she was saying this they rolled their old family footage of them in the car and looking out the window frame. The film was grainy and lacked defined colors and HD pixels like we had to day. It added realness to the documentary as a whole. Showing a renowned media photographer's childhood through older mediums of film making let's the viewers connect the older ways of documenting life and the new way that Annie fully utilizes. The third way they delivered the essence of Annie and her life was through showing her astounding photographs that she took throughout her life: her beginning work, her word at rolling stone, then Vanity Fair, and her later work of her partner and her family. These still shots of her work with the various narrators and interesting stories made the documentary feel very real and it felt like it gave a complete look at the professional and artistic life of Annie. I left the film feeling astounded by the various mediums of art and life documentation. The documentary chose fairly simple ways of delivering the message. No particularly special camera movements and placement. It was a clean film with a direct message of how photography takes a fraction of a minute and heightens reality.

Fun film find in Astoria!

Last thursday I had the pleasure of going to The Museum of Moving Images in Astoria, Queens. The museum, which is still under construction, is a sharp mix of the history and current media and film. They have vintage television sets. The tour guides ( they come automatic with entry and are really really helpful) showed my group that in the 1950's the television creators were playing around with the design of tv's. One had four wheels on the bottom and another was in the shape of a circle. They were not sure yet how to get housewives used to this new appliance, so they were trying to make it user friendly. Another really neat home entertainment system had a television, a radio, and a mirror. I personally wish one of those was still around, but I digress.

Besides the cool historical pieces the museum also had fun activities to try and see what it was really like to be an actor on a green-screen, an illustrator/cartoonist, amongst other things. I took a try at making a flip book, you know those books with a bunch of pages and when you flip them really fast they and the still images make it seem as though the subjects in those pictures are moving. That was fun and is just $7 and in color on a regular visit. I also got in front of a green screen and saw myself on a television screen with a crazy background behind me. All in all the museum was quite a fun trip and i'll be making it again with my film enthusiast friends.