Museum Portrait

For this task I visited the national portrait gallery at St Martin's Place in London. I went to this gallery, in expectation to be inspired by the visual techniques the artists may have adopted in their paintings. For example I was interested to experience how they were able to communicate emotion through visuals, and how the artists were able to establish a meaning through one single frame, i.e. the artwork.

As it was the national portrait gallery, I had the opportunity to view first hand many famous portraits that I had learnt about many years before at school, for example the famous King Henry VIIth portrait. As well as century old paintings there were also modern photography installations that I was able to study also.

The one similarity I found between both the paintings and the photography was that the subjects of the image were always positions in the centre of the frame. This tells me that if I was to centralise the audiences attention on one key character, that means I have to ensure the character is based in the centre of the frame throughout the majority of the film. This will ensure that the audience will be able to establish where their centre of attention should lie.

Other examples of cinematographic elements in these paintings were the eye levels of the subjects. On many occasions the eyes were postponed on the upper third of the frame, meaning that the majority of the upper body was also visable to the viewer. This is a common cinematographic technique which allows the audience not only see the expressions in their face but also in the position of their body's also (i.e. body language)
There were other aspects of the eye line present i  a lot of other portraits that I noticed, especially within those which depict past Royals. The eye line tended to be quite far up the frame looking down on the viewer, which assumes a certain sense of power/ authority which is also present in a lot of cinematographic techniques.

In conclusion I believe the trip to the museum has greatly inspired me and has taught me many cinematic techniques which I will be able to utilise in any projects that I may work on in the future. This is thanks to the artwork that had displayed such visual techniques. By becoming more familiar, with the techniques that that were present i the artwork, I feel I'll be able to pick up, recognise and appreciate them more when viewing a film, and then go on to utilise them in my own.