AV News 177 - August 2009
During the course of making the sequence I watched a film on television titled
"Once upon a time in America" with Robert De Nero playing the part of a
gangster. From his youth in to adulthood, he was infatuated with a young ballet
dancer whose name was Deborah. The main background music was
"Deborah's Theme" composed by Ennio Morreconi for the film. This music
drifted in and out of the various scenes creating the right atmosphere and mood
for the story being told. I chose this music as the main theme for Isadora, along
with other pieces to suite the different scenes, such as the Strauss Waltz for the
Vienna passage, also a Nocturne and a short piece from Romeo and Juliet for
other passages.
The images weren't too difficult to find, the pictures of Isadora and her lovers
came from books or the Internet. The
Victorian shops and buildings were taken in
Leeds, the Concert Halls and Opera Houses
were taken in the European Cities where it
was known Isadora had frequented. I had
visited most of the cities over various City
Break Holidays so I already had a good
collection of stock images in the bank.
Almost all of the images had a vignette
around edges to help create the mood of the
era. These were achieved by finding an appropriate image of the desired
texture and colour, the Gaussian Blur tool was used just enough to leave some
detail in the picture, ( flowers are useful for this purpose).
I then used the Motion Blur tool to give the streaky angled effect picking up
the detail I had left in the image when applying the Gaussian Blur. These tools
are in Photoshop Filters. I used the clone tool to bring the base images through
the blurred image leaving the desired vignette around th