The first style of illustrative photography I am researching is non-fiction crime book covers. These are my favourite types of books and they always have really interesting and captivating covers. The covers of the books tend to have a direct link to the book, e.g the crime scene, the characters or something to do with what is written inside, as it is based on fact.
The first book that I am going to look at is the Essex Boys book, which features some 'newspaper cut out' type font for the title, a photo of each of the Essex Boys and the range rover that they were found shot in.
This cover really interested me because it shows where they died, who they were and it makes you want to read the book to find out what happened.
The second book I really like the cover of is Inside The Mind of a Murderess, which is about Myra Hindley, the infamous Moors murderer. The cover is really unique because it is very plain and simple, but with a picture of her mugshot that became really famous around the world. When people think of Myra Hindley they think of that one photo, so the book is linked with the photo now.
Another cover that is an example of a true crime book is Charles Bronson's book, which also has a photo of himself as the cover, up until the recent block buster film 'Bronson' came out, and it now has a picture of Tom Hardy in his role of Bronson.
 |
| The real Charles Bronson |
 |
| Tom Hardy as Charles Bronson in the film |
A lot of books do this. When they become big movies they tend to have the actors on the cover, rather than the original cover before it became a film. It helps the audience to know that it is a film and also a lot of people will read the book after the film. This is the second style of illustrative photography that I want to research, fiction stories that became films. It's popular to show the movie on the book because more people watch films than read, and the best way to advertise a book is through it's biggest seller - the movie.
The first book I have chosen is the lovely bones, originally the cover was of a bracelet floating in water (relevant to the story) and it was very simple and intriguing. The bracelet is mentioned numerously throughout the book and it's quite specific so if you have read the book you will recognise the unique house bracelet charm.
Once the film was turned into the motion picture, it featured a still of what happens in the film. Including the field that plays a big part in the film/book, the main actor and actress. The movie is also filmed in and interesting light and style, and this is reflected in the cover.
My Sister's Keeper is another example of this, there have been quite a few different covers for this book until it became a movie. The cover shows two young girls, presumably sisters - referring to the title. It looks very angelic and very light. All the covers before the film show either two girls or only one, because the book is based heavily in the main character.
The film came out and the covers now show the mother (cameron diaz), the younger daughter and the older daughter. The book did not include the mother in the cover because the book is quite different to the movie. Also they have used the mother featured in the cover because the actress is famous and shows a direct link to the movie. Interestingly though, the font of the authors name has not changed throughout all the covers, showing a sort of stamp on her books.
Another example of this is the really popular, The Notebook. The cover before the film showed an old American style porch that's painted white (highly relevant to the story). It also has some handwriting on the cover, that implies a handwritten letter which is also very relevant to the story.
Once the film came out the cover changed, but not too much. The picture changed but the font and writing pretty much stayed the same. Now shown on the cover is a still from the famous kissing in the rain scene in the movie. This is also the DVD cover and is most iconic image of the film.
No comments:
Post a Comment