Educational Media Reviews Online

Gregory Crewdson is a highly acclaimed still photographer whose work processes are more like those of filmmakers than photographers. His photographs give the sense of being stills from narrative films in which intense psychological dramas are unfolding. He works with budgets that provide for assistance from production designers, set decorators, and crews that build sets based on storyboards with elaborately staged set-ups and attention to the most minute detail.

This documentary shows him working on location and on a sound stage. He often returns to the same suburban locations where he creates backdrops for his world of quiet alienation and disconnect. As a child he became interested in the work of Diane Arbus and documentary photography. He names Cindy Sherman as an influence in terms of her fictions and constructs and admits to have been very influenced by David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. He attaches the notion of mise-en-scene to photography in ways that are similar to what is seen in film genres like horror and melodrama or a Hitchcockian thriller, exposing the theatricality of everyday life.

He shoots 40-50 shots from which he selects several and creates composites to eventually end up with the one still image that represents his narrative. Crewdson’s preoccupation with the perfection of execution is unparalleled and director Ben Shapiro perfectly captures his artistic process. The disc includes deleted scenes, additional interviews and a very interesting Q&A with Elvis Mitchell at the LACMA. Highly recommended for anyone interested in art direction and the relationship between film and photography.