Are you watching closely?

The Pledge

As a lover of film and avid fan of Christopher Nolan, I wanted to recreate the movie poster for one of my favorite films; The Prestige. It was fun to figure out how to match lighting, composition, compositing, and typography as close to the original reference poster.

The Turn

I had to play around with lighting and then decided to go with using a continuous LED light on all three subjects in dark rooms to achieve the desired lighting. My models, Anna and Jesse, were very accommodating to help me as I played with the lighting and positions in order to finally get the desired look. Jesse’s shot required two light sources in order to have a good fill light next to his key while me and Anna only needed one light to imitate the desire look.

The Prestige

After taking all the photos I then took them into Photoshop and began playing with the color and enhancing the lighting. The main trick that I wanted to nail down was getting the right smoke element to be used on Anna’s face. The link to the smoke texture I found is located HERE. Using this element I was able to shape it to wrap around her face and further separate the left and right side of her face for the entire composition.

The Prestige has been a huge motivation to me as a filmmaker and continues to inspire me with it’s wonderful story and powerful messages about competition and learning to control our pride. I hope to continue to emulate and expand upon the tricks I learned to imitate one of my favorite cinematographers and be able to create my very own personal and unique style. So I want to leave you with one final question. Are you watching closely?