Mary Photoshoot

So yesterday I spent my afternoon editing the exposures from the photoshoot on Monday. I have to admit I feel like this is my best photoshoot so far and I am very proud of both the quality of the pictures and the overall ease of working with a great subject such as Mary. She did great in that she needed little to no direction, we just worked very well together and I hope to do a lot more photography with her. Without further ado, here are the pictures.

Random Movie Fact: In the holiday classic The Nightmare Before Christmas, it took a group of around 100 people three years to complete this movie. For one second of film, up to 12 stop-motion moves had to be made.

Thanks for the support,
Daniel Hess

Paranormal Activity 3

So last night I decided to see Paranormal Activity 3 with my girlfriend Ashley. I went in with almost no expectations even though I did enjoy the first two, especially the original. I am not here to give away the story but it starts out right before the events of the second one and you see Katie drop off all these old vhs recordings which neither seems to remember. And then after the whole robbery scene in the second one it switches over to the tapes. Again here the theme is that tension builds up from the beginning in a very strange way, at the start of the film this is achieved beautifully which has a pretty cool effect. However directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (of Catfish fame) begin to stick to a predictable scare/plot factor which seems all too familiar. Things get crazier we start finding out more than the biggest thing that hurts this film is when they leave the house and stay the night with Julie's grandmother...this is where the film loses all the steam. At this point the plot becomes so easily predictable it almost hurts, there is not subtle way to say it. As soon as they got there I thought "Oh it is becoming one of those movies." I understand Joost and Schulman wanted to take it another new direction but the reason no one took the films the way they did is because it begins to make the film more like a conventional horror film which sucks. Plus there are almost no 'little' scares in this film, all of that is traded off for big over the top more crowd pleasing thrills. These young directors are fresh in their careers and it seems as though this franchise was just too much for them to take on. If there is a fourth incarnation in this series hopefully they will release the horror comes from keeping it contained and small; that is why the first one was so successful.

Pass on this one or wait until dvd.

Thanks for the support,
Daniel Hess