Waiting For... by Chipka
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Description
Music inspired my work on this particular image.
To hear it, feel free to click:
HERE.
Though this week has been exceptionally insane (and next week promises to be worse) I was able to steal a bit of down time and help celebrate Corey’s birthday. In doing so, I did what I love to do. I acquired music. Two CDs. Two soundtracks. One of them, the soundtrack to the Frank Miller phenomenon known as 300 serves as the cheapest soundtrack I’ve purchased this year. I spent an entire $3.99 on it.
I’d also purchased the soundtrack to The Thing which is a direct prequel to the John Carpenter film, The Thing, which is a remake of the 1950s classic, The Thing. (All three movies are based on the John W. Campbell novella: Who Goes There?) In terms of the 2011 “prequel” to the 1982 classic, it’s a special effects extravaganza with a deliciously eerie soundtrack. As a prequel, it works reasonably well, though like most “alien monsters from outer space” gore fests, it doesn’t make much sense. The monster spends most of the movie blowing its cover (in moist, biological detail) and thus, rendering itself vulnerable to attack. It gets attacked quite a lot, though admittedly, it has what could be called “major attitude,” so maybe it spends so much screen-time blowing its cover because it’s endowed with pretty serious attitude. To put it bluntly, the monster in the Thing is one prodigious bad-@$$ . The film is a dumb explosion of prosthetic viscera, latex-cast limbs, and copious amounts of Red #5 with a dollop or two of Slime-mixture #8: the more expensive slime-in-a-barrel, which explains why they don’t use quite as much of it as a film of this caliber might demand.
As I sat, listening to the score to The Thing, I noticed how a bit of music began to influence my thoughts. I immediately went into my files and pulled up two photographs I’d recently taken. One photo worked well, by itself, but it lacked a real focus. The other simply didn’t work, but I liked the human standing with his back to me. Rather than banish both images to my “I’ll get to you later” file, I decided to do something based on the music I was listening to. This image is the end result. I find that it resembles a rather off-center movie poster, and now I’m curious about the movie (or story) it tells. I think there will be more to this, a bit later, and it’ll probably involve a guy standing out in the middle of nowhere, checking messages beamed into his iPhone. I can truly say, however, that the music accompanying this image actually captures a lot of what Southern Illinois feels like. There’s something incredibly bleak and scary in the state, once you pass far to the south of Joliet. Something, I suspect, lives in all of those corn-fields, and it isn’t very nice.
For those of you actually listening to the musical inspiration to this piece, the “sliding” strings were what drew my attention. That eerie slide is a leitmotif throughout the entire soundtrack, repeated here and there with sliding strings, sliding woodwinds, and during the major conflict scenes, with sliding brass. It’s quite an effective musical suite and I often wonder how much of the movie’s overall effectiveness is due to creative musical composition.
As always, thank you for viewing, reading, listening, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week: preferably without spooky cornfields and desolate truck-stops.
Comments (29)
Faemike55
Great work on the photographic manipulation Movies: 300 was excellent in the story and execution (if you haven't het, read the Graphic novel it is excellent!!!) The Novella by Campbell is a must read - the movies do not do justice to the story
ArtistKimberly
Beautiful,
MagikUnicorn
AWESOME I LIKE THIS CHIEF :)
NefariousDrO
I love this image. What I liked about the original film version of "The Thing" was that we don't really see much, because our imaginations are so much more effective than any film special effects could ever hope to be. A good soundtrack can really help a movie, and most times if it's good I'll actually enjoy listening to it all by itself (The soundtrack to 2001 comes to mind) but I am a very musical person, and it's hard to imagine any aspect of my life without music being involved somehow. I like this image, and I'm highly entertained by your description of the movies who's soundtracks inspired it.
EJD64
Really like the sky color and the composition. Great picture.
flavia49
intense image and wonderful text
wotan
Beautiful artwork, atm and PW Chipka... really cool!
auntietk
If you had two trash shots and combined them to make THIS, then they were absolutely, totally, remarkably worthy! What a great result! This is outstanding, with or without a story, with or without music!
RodS
A wonderful and slightly eerie composite, Chip - I like it a lot! I'm going to have to raid my files as well and give this a shot when I have a little more time. Now you've made me curious, so i'm going to go have a listen..
jocko500
wonderful shot this is . merry christmas
beachzz
This has such a mystical quality--something about a feeling that, yes he IS waiting--awesome!!
MrsLubner
The mood is great. I remember another singer - well, I had his album...you know, the old-fashioned kind that needed a record player with a needle to play it - Glen Yarborrow who sang music that had this feeling to it. Well done.
micturn
Something very Stephen King about this...gets more interesting as I look at it.
durleybeachbum
Superb piece of work!
CoreyBlack
Oooooooh, I LIKE this! Nicely moody and full of depth, and with the music it really takes on a whole other level of mystical/mysterious/errieness. It's also an amazingly cinematic image that reminds me of one of those late 60s/early 70s cool-arty Independent films or groovy Brit-import TV shows. In fact, when I first looked at this I immediately thought of the opening credit sequence of "The Prisoner" where Patrick McGoohan is running along the beach with the "I AM NOT A NUMBER! I AM A FREE MAN!" followed by the sinister laughter on the soundtrack along with Ron Grainer's swanky theme music. Ultra cool image here. Love it!
Meisiekind
I love this Chip - everything about it!!! :)))
helanker
What a fabulous shot Chip. A really excellent Photo Manup. :-)
watapki66
Wonderful shot and perfect music for it!
sandra46
WONDERFUL IMAGE! PERFECTION AT WORK!
bmac62
I don't buy the whole UFO thing...but if I did, I'd expect this man to be taken up any minute....OOOooooOOOoooo:) A deliciously moody piece of postwork!
MrsRatbag
You've concocted a sublime bit of fantasy here...well done!!
minos_6
What you've created here is a very moody and evocative piece of work. My first thought was of poor old David Vincent in "The Invaders", having a close encounter whilst looking for a shortcut he never found..... As I read through the other comments, I can see your image has had a similar effect on others, too. I love images that spark an emotional response and this is definitely one of those. It's almost primal. Maybe it's your subject's apparent lack of awareness at what's going on around him. Whatever is, this is excellent, and goes into my favourites. Have a great holiday, Chip!
KatesFriend
The photo brings to mind another short story you wrote last year called "Scrub and Wanderer". I remember it being about a mysterious and spreading degeneration of civilization in the mid-western US. Perhaps this is Val, alone in the outskirts of a former great city like Milwaukee. Now empty of its inhabitants, cold and quiet. Will nature reclaim it in the centuries to come? Who knows? And then there is that mysterious 'phantom sun' which only a few, like Val, seem to see. A cause or just a symptom of this strange social plague. The moment I layed eyes on this I thought about "Scrub and Wanderer" and the music just added to the strength of that thought. Very effective. I trust Val is still listening to CBC radio, getting news from the outside world. Over the last eighteen months, calls and EMails from the "troubled zone" have gone silent. We watch and wait. Merry Christmas.
Orinoor
I love the image you've created, it really does have that sinister something out there feel to it and this soundtrack is the perfect companion. Excellent bit of visual story telling!
GiMi53
Excellent upload, in your very own style ! Congratulations for your selection in LWitG week #52 (Last Week in the Gallery #52) ! Happy Holidays !
:~)
tibet2004uk
Totally love the mood of this! Makes me think of a sci-fi movie, the guy waiting for something odd to happen. I can actually imagine this one as a movie poster. Great image!
kgb224
Stunning capture Chip. God Bless.
anianiani
Thoughtful.....Excellent shot
praep
Breathtaking image - looks like he is waiting for the extraterrestrials to visit us.