Best Shot assignment

Person:

Context: Photo taken by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair in 2008. It is on the set of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Content: The photo shows Harrison Ford, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg in front of an elaborate set for the worst Indiana Jones movie. It is super cool to see these three incredibly influential people together and continuing something they all worked together to create decades before. They all seem very comfortable collaborating and being in an environment like this because it is absolutely nothing new to them.

Form: the colors and light seem very nostalgic to me. The photo very intentionally displays the large set in the background and it looks really cool to see those kinds of things without all the camera tricks and visual effects hiding it for the final product. It seems pretty staged to me, especially the way Harrison is standing so Harrison Fordly and leaving a window just big enough to show Cate Blanchett sitting in the background. It looks really pretty though.

Place: 

 Context: I don't know the details of the photographer but this is a photo of the entrance to an abandoned Wizard of Oz theme park in Beech Mountain, North Carolina. It officially closed down in the 80s but they reopen it for one weekend a year and sometimes people sneak in to explore and take pictures. Its a pretty creepy place most of the year.
Content: I looked through a bunch of pictures of The Land of Oz but I liked this one because you could see the overgrown plants, the big front gate, and the cracking and fading yellow brick road. It shows how time has worn the place down but it also doesn't just look creepy because you can still see the fun colors and can get excited for what is behind the doors.
Form: I like how the image is centered on the gates but you see them from below and a ways down the road.

Wild card:

Context: Unknown photographer but it was taken during the production of The Empire Strikes Back. It shows how the original Star Wars opening crawls were filmed before a computer could scroll through the words at that unique angle to make things easier. The camera was moved over the large plate with the text printed out on it.
Content: It's super cool to see how they did this, especially because it isn't something we would ever think twice about nowadays because it is so easy now. When they decided to do this they had to build this whole rig just to make text slide across the way they needed it too. A lot of what the special effects teams were doing for these movies was very rushed and they didn't realize they were making history so much of what they did went unrecorded except for how it turned out in the movie, so this is a rare glimpse at some of their strange methods.