Freestyle Academy proudly presents

Sunday Stroll Gone Awry: A Narrative Character Portrait by Willem Geier (2015)

My character, named Andy, is a junior in highschool who was biking to his friend's house on a weekend. On his way to the friend's house, he stumbled upon what appeared to be a kidnapping. There was a little Asian toddler across the crosswalk from him. She had a brand new sky blue bicycle with hot pink tassels on the handlebars. As the two waited for the cross sign to change, a middle-aged, medium-build man in the driver seat of a red sedan pulled up to the sidewalk. He rolled down the window and jingled some keys out of the window as he motioned for her to come closer. She ran away from the car, leading the Andy to believe that it was an abduction scenario. He phoned the police who in turn found the guy who turned out to be the father of the little girl. The shot that I took is the moment Andy witnessed the potential abduction.

Andy had a sense of tunnel vision during the incident so I tried to make it look like everything around him was drowned out. I took a close up so we could see the intensity of his reaction to the situation was and how concerned he was for the life of the little girl. The lighting I used was very dramatic, almost in a noir setting, to show how focused he was on making sure this little girl got out okay. I had a helmet on his head to show he was biking and had him wear standard clothing for someone of Andy's age. The main problems I encountered during the shoot were getting the model to take on the right facial expressions and the lighting equipment, which would only work for about half of the shots I took.
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