Zombie Cliche Lookout: Misjudgement
This trope is by no means tied to the zombie genre, or even the horror genre. Indeed, it seems to show up everywhere from drama to comedy. I’m speaking, of course, of how characters or the audience completely misjudge a character based on the evidence that’s available to them, often by falling prey to stereotypes. This is usually played up in one of two ways. The first is to teach us a lesson about our own ingrained prejudices, showing us how our assumptions can cause us to miss out on things, or unfairly misjudge people. The other way this is used is for humorous purposes. That super manly zombie-killing monster? Yeah, he’s really into knitting. It relaxes him. The beautiful, well manicured prom queen? She can’t live without her chewing tobacco.
In zombie fiction, this is usually used as a sort of stroke of luck. Our beleaguered survivors, exhausted and almost psychologically broken stumbled into some huge cache of supplies or experience they didn’t know they had because they had all misjudged one person in their group.
About this Episode:
I wanted to have the back side of the stairs in the second frame, and shot a number of different angles with them obscuring more and less of the scene. When I got everything into Photoshop, it just didn’t work as well as it did in my head. I ended up going with an extremely subtle version of the shot, made even more subtle by the way I cropped it.
Discussion Question: Photographic Staging
What do you guys like to see when it comes to photographing the different panels of the comic? Do you like a large variation in zoom and perspective? Blurry objects in the foreground to give you a sense of three-dimensional space? Let me know how I can make my photography more interesting.
Typo alert: angels–>angles 😀 I’ll let Dave find this one! 😉
Fixed!
Discussion Question:
I do like some foreground objects but when in scene it can become a bit distracting if over done. How’s your macro? To add more depth to your shots try shooting up or down at the minis. Mix it up with not so many eye level panels, think comic book.
I’d really like a real macro lens, but unfortunately they’re out of price range at the moment. Someday.
I do like your thought about more overhead and low-level shots. I do far too many at eye level.
“teach up” -> “teach us”
Fixed!
No I want everything the same boring way. In fact can you just do everything in sepia?
Ooh, sepia.
There’s only one problem with sepia tones: if you overdo it in editing, on some monitors it will make your zombies look like they’re seeping out of the picture and all over the place. 😉 So you should probably have an alternate image that isn’t sepia toned for the people whose monitors are so old sepia looks like it’s invading their screens! 😀
That sounds like a hell of a monitor.
If it feels natural to you, then it should translate as natural to us. Find your subject, the direction you want us to look and go from there.
Since they’re in a basement a neat shot would be from the outside in from the basement window from a fallen/crawling zed head through a barely boarded up window. Many strange things and feet to dangle in front of us, how would the dead look at and see the light.
Brain food for thought?
That sounds pretty awesome. I wonder if I could pull that off. If not in the basement, once they come back upstairs.