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HOP - FROG

The text in which this project is based is the Edgar Allan Poe’s short story called Hop-Frog.

Hop-Frog, a person with dwarfism and has some physical deformities who takes revenge on the King by murdering him in a masquerade. Poe found writing therapeutic, and he made use of it to take the revenge he could not do in real life, using Hop-Frog as is alter-ego.

Due to this duality between the author and the text, I decided that instead of creating two characters from the story for mi FMP, I would use Allan Poe as my second one, creating a link between the story and the writer. The conceptual goal would be to make the audience identify this duality and make the viewer realize that they are both “the same person”. To make this happen, a study of the structure and composition of the final photos has been done, playing with the position of the characters and their attitudes.

Hop-Frog

This character makeup is composed of 5 silicone prosthetics on the face, on cowl which covers the head and the neck of the model, some fake teeth and some flat silicone prosthetics on the hands.

Edgar Allan Poe

I made some flat silicone prosthetics to simulate the eyebags as well as a hand-knotted moustache. The hair was styled for the photoshoot by Anna María Rivera.

The concept

The idea for the performance context is to create a promotion photoshoot for a Netflix series based on Allan Poe’s best stories. being Hop-Frog one of them.

Collaboration

Photograpy and edition: Jose Esteve. Jose is an amazing photographer based in London whose work is normally focus on portraits. However, for this project he worked really hard on the composition and structure of the pictures as I needed to tell a story with the photos. Also, he is an expert in lighting and he perfectly understood the atmosphere I wanted for the photos.

Thank you to Raquel Acosta for filming the behind the scenes video, to my model Javier and to my assistant Anna Maria Rivera.

Jose Esteve Website

We can see the hands of Poe writing the story. This creates a link between the story and the writer.

Hop - Frog and the King talk about the masquerade. “Come lend us your assistance. Characters, my fine fellow; we stand in need of characters -- all of us -- ha! ha! ha!

Hop - Frog gives the orang-outang costume to the King.

Poe’s frustration is visible. Here, the writer expresses his anger and his desire for revenge. The link between Hop-Frog and Allan Poe is stronger. Notice the burnt and damaged paper which is a link to what is about to happen in the story.

Hop-Frog is holding the chains and we can see the fire, the smoke and the colour of it in the atmosphere of the photo. His face also expresses his “happiness” of seeing his revenge taking place.

Allan Poe looks exhasuted and one part of his face is getting more monstery-like. This would be the final scene where we can finally see that Hop-Frog is the character which Poe uses as a personification of his revenge.