narrowing my ideas

after my failed attempt at the idea of touching wood, ive decideed that the idea of suspersistions is so vast that i want to narrow it down so i can develop the ideas i have within this. 

so far ive looked at the idea of 'knock/touching wood'  and while im going to explore a little deeper into this idea i dont think visually it may be as visual as some of my ideas for other supersitions. 

i've picked a selection of 5 strong superstitions that i can explore and maybe later develop into more superstitions.

• 'step on a crack, break your mother's back'
• Dont open an umbrella inside.
• 'he loves me' 'he loves me not'
• break a mirror 7years bad luck
• shoes on a table brings badluck. 

Asa Andersson

Asa Andersson works across image-making, writing and art teaching. She has an interest in site-responsive art practices and multi-disciplinary creative approaches in relation to text, photography, film and print.  She classes her work as Poetic-photography.

I discovered her work in the book 'Shifting Horizons' which looks into female landscape photography. I decided that she was approapriate to my work as she doesnt as such photograph landscapes but has a mix of text and imagery in an unusal way, her images that ive seen in this collection are all macros or close ups, playing with depth of feild and it creates an usual image, almost abstract in a sence. While the photos are of nothing overly pretty they are very asteticly pleasing. and i think the depth of feild and the textures and way the images are shot add to this. sadly i cant find much else about this photographer except that she lives in stockholm but also is an associative lecturer here in the UK. It does make my reserch alot more difficult when the photographers dont have websites ect or there isnt alot of text based around them.

Elina Brotherus- Le' Miror

While looking at Brotherus for my other project i noticed her images Le'miror a collection of photographs taken to go along side her video of the same title. 

The images depict Broutherus (as she often works in self portrature) reflected in the bathroom mirror as the steam from a bath or shower disappears to show more of her looking in the mirror. While this has not alot to do with what ive been looking at of late, i was thinking of going into multiples and grids with my images, either the likes of a large grid of images of a similar time or dyptics or tryptics of images. So when i noticed that she uses multiples this is what made me stop and look at this. However the idea of the use of a mirror is interesting due to the idea of the superstition of 7years bad luck if your to break a mirror.

While the image is very straight forward and very simple in construction with the over the shoulder camera positioning and the stragicially placed toothbrushes, its the repition that makes this squence interesting, and just how we stat to see more and more thats revealed, almost as if to say, the more u see yourself the more is revealed. I also like that everything remains the same except the one thing, the mirror.  which is something i like the idea of, repition.

Jorma Puranen

While looking through portphio i found the work of Jorma Puranen. The photographer Jorma Puranen has been working in Lapland for years, so when he found a dusty box of 19th-century images of the Sámi in an archive in Paris, he decided to take them back to their native land in what he calls an imaginary homecoming. He worked overlaping images like i experiemented with with the idea of touching wood. his work is stunning, the mix of history and culture and the nature and feel of the place. Some of his images he uses text on signs in the landscape rather then using text externally like sophie calle. 
he uses light very well and his images overlaying or psycical transparisys of the images work well in contrast to the snow covered landscapes. 

Sophie Calle

As so far i am really keen on the idea of multiple images, and or playing with the idea of text and images, and while i cant seem to find many on superstitions.

My first thought on multiple images or text was Sophie Calle.

Sophie Calle is a french photographer, instillation artist and writer. 

Looking into some of her work i see alot of different techniques and different experimentations.

Her book 'Exquisite pain'  Follows a conceptual documenty approach to her journey though japan, and a journey through pain. 

"i left for japan on october 25, 1984, unsupecting that this day would mark the beginning of the 92 day countdown to the end of a love affair. Nothing extraordinary- but to me, at the time, the unhappiest moment in my life, and one for which i blamed that trip itself. I got back from France on january 28, 1985, from that moment whenever people asked me how it went, i chose to skip the Far East bit and tell them about suffering instead. In return i started asking both friends and chance encounters: 'when did you suffer most?'- i decided to continue such exchanged until i had got over my pain by compairing it with other people or had worn out my own story through sheer repetition.'

The book starts of a collection of images she took while traveling and away in Japan accompanied by text taken from letters sent or photos of letters recived along side her own work, its a collection and documentry. however each image has stamped on it a day, a count down to this big 'event' she classes as 'unhappyness' the day in which her lover ends it with her. Here it adds a new dimention to the images, while we know that while she seems to be enjoying the experiences that she has the reader is always aware that this big event is coming that will make her unhappy and even voids or makes you sort of miss the connection to the images in some way. As well, the addition of the letters and text makes the seemingly mundane images of some of the photos another dimention. Once we reach the 'D-DAY' as it is, the book changes slightly. one page contains the image on 'the day of unhappyness' at the top section and under it we have a peice that she wrote about that day, the number attached goes up as if 'days after' and the right hand page contains text from a number of different people about there suffering.  as the days go on the text that calle wrote about her sufforing becomes transparent and the text slowly disappears as to suggest that her sufforing was fading away to nothing. Even the contents of this book is interesting and uses a grid like set up with thumbnails.
I love calles use of repetition and the way she uses it to compair to the stage in which she was oblivious to the inpending sadness.

this unusal stance is great for my work and explores different ways for me to connect images, and use repetition in an unusal way. it also shows me a not so obvious way to use text, often the text would contrast the images. 

I also like the repetition in some of her other works. In her book 'M'as-tuvue'  she has a section classed as 'games and ceremonies' which features repetition heavily.  
These selections of fun photographic games and ceremonies included images of repatitious graves. instillations of her birthday ritual, and most interestingly she had a friend set her rules of what she had to do in specific cercomstances, instruction to her life as it were, and which she documented. This i really like. the documentation of a specific idea or concept is what i really like about this. its something different, and when i struggle sometime for inspiration it maybe a good idea to take part in some sort of photography game like this? Some of the other games she took part in were relatied to a book her friend wrote in which the character maria was based on her, she did a few projects based on what 'maria' was like and did, and tried to copy it, this is where her images of the 'chromatic diet' came from. 

many of sophie calles little projects are very inspirational to me. And i just love some of the ideas ive got from her work.

starting point 'knock on wood'

i thought the best way to get into this was to start get past this block ive been having and get into making work again, so i started with the idea of 'touching wood' meaning good luck.

Knocking on wood, and the spoken expression "knock on wood," are used to express a desire to avoid "tempting fate" after making some boast or speaking of one's own death. In the United Kingdom, Egypt, Ireland, India and Australia, the term "touch wood" is used.

The meaning of such expressions is that the spoken words or thinking are only hypothetical and are not really wished to happen, so everything may not really happen but fell in a stone or in a piece of wood.

i started off by taking images of my hands touching woodern serfaces on my DSLR. Tables mainly as they are normally varnished rather then painted wood ect. theyre not amazing photographs, i used it on macro so i can play with depth of field and such and just get a feel for it, and really just getting back into the swing of it. 

photos #1

Out of all of them the last is most interesting, more for the angle, the addition of more of the background, and the detailing on the table. the others are good but all a little two similar. The lighting and whitebalence has clearly changed within the locations and this is something i will have to be weary of next set of images that i complete. Also the colour and such of the tables change and look different. Maybe insted of the same hand i could use others? a mix of surfaces and people. However i really do like the depth of feild and playing with it to some extent. i also like the way the texture of the skin reflects the texture and grain of the wood. 
I also tried experimenting converting the images to black and white to see the effect it has on the images and how it would bring the images together. 

these images do seem to fit better together then the colour versions, but i dont know if thats just because you cant notice as much the difference between the images expesh with the whitebalance difference not being so obvious. 

another experiment i tried with these photos was to create a double or triple exposure by overlaying them on photoshop to give the impression of movement to see if that would work or how it would look

while  in some ways this works, it gives a ghost like effect and hints at movement which u dont get in the images before. but i dont know if its really relievent? 

what am i trying to say about this idea of knocking on wood? or touching wood and its relationship with modern day? 

The contemp trip

We did a trip to the contempery in nottingham as part of the British Art show 7. while there wasnt alot of photography or video there it was very interesting to get an idea of instillations and the workings of it. I found it very interesting comeing from an artistic background.  I didnt find much useful or relivent work to my project on superstitions but it was a great eye opener and a great sourse of reference. it kinda reminded me that i can look at art as well as film and photography!

Superstitions reserch

As part of my reserch, in my notebook ive managed to get some people i know to write me down as many superstitions they can think of, of know of to try and get more ideas of what people are told. im also gonna ask people from different generations to see if this verys at all. I want to get an idea of how in the minds of people some of them are, while others have sort of faded into nothing as they become less relivent. This is what im looking at, representing superstinions in modern situations as well as looking at represenation of an idea through a more unusal way or a more conceptual manner, and i think by getting social interaction feed back ill be able to push my ideas forward. 

update** 
so far ive managed to get a few people to do this, and they seem to have rather alot of the more well known superstitions in common. I think if i carry on with this i will be able to find some unusual ones but also get to know which ones are more commonly known

superstitions in photography- Ansley west

Ive actually found it rather difficult to find photographers that has looked at superstitions and old wives tales, so far the only one ive been able to find is the work of Ansley West. In her work shes used a very conceptual approach to her work. Ansley West is fine art photographer from Atlanta, Georgia. She received her BFA in photography from the University of Georgia. Her art interprets narratives both real and speculative through her compositions, often using herself to recontextualize those stories.
Her superstitions project are a collection of images that are in triptyics and while she uses text her images are very conceptual and i really think some are stunning visually. 

The images are often related to the idea and obviously set up, while some looks candid and documentry style, they have been created in that way and i really like this. This idea of a mix between documentry and conceptual is something i want to look into my work. I love her use of colour, and how maybe one image maybe suggestive of the superstitions while the other two are not as obvious or always so related. i dont really like the text, but it does help to make the connection between the images and the basis of the work. 
I also love the idea of a dyptic or even more so a grid effect for some of the images, i think it would work better with some of the images more then others which i think stand alone images would look better, but i guess with experimentation i could see what works best!

The ring

The ring is a horror film based around the idea of a video tape that u watch will kill u in 7days. The plot is about a woman finding out what happened when her neice is killed, and finds the legendry tape. The random mix of images and sounds makes no sence, but once over the phone will be rung and u will be told that u have '7days' the only way to stop it is to make a copy of the tape, and we see how and why the tape was create and the history of the mysterious girl in the video. 

 The bit that interested me was in the first section of the film in which we see two teenage girls discussing the legend of the tape, and not realising the truth in it watches it. 

 The idea that the tape follows a set pattern of what happens. idea that a video tape can cause ur death falls into the idea of superstition and unless u copy it, no matter what you do you will die.

Even though im not what im wanting to do a horror film but finding it hard to look at anything else thats done on superstitions.

Urban Legends collection

The urban legends collections is a group of teen horror/slasher movie to which the deaths surrounding the main character is based on famous 'urban legends' The main film,  or the original urban legends film the plot revolves around the idea of revenge by killing everyone surrounding the main characture by using horrific 'urban legends' Urban legends  urban myth, urban tale, or contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories usually believed by their tellers to be true. As with all folklore and mythology, the designation suggests nothing about the story's veracity, but merely that it is in circulation, exhibits variation over time, and carries some significance that motivates the community in preserving and propagating it. everyone has heard these storys and pass them on as if they know someone whos actually seen/had it done to them, when really it has just been passed around and made to be truth. The plot is a very good twist on the idea of urban legends was just something interesting to look at for this idea.

Dead Silence

As ive found it very difficult finding photographers that deal with superstitions ive decided to look at some films i know contain the theme of superstitions, myths and legends. One of the ones i was recomended to was Dead Silence. Dead silence is a horror film based around a ventiliquist doll and how its lead to people from the main characters home town or life dying.  The idea its based on a superstition that a ventriliquist doll is ment to be a bad omen and brings death with it. And this one in particular that caused his wifes death is attached to the legend of Mary Shaw, even with her own lil poem of warning:

'Beware the stare of Mary Shaw,

She has no children, only dolls.

If you see her in your dreams,

Be sure you never, ever scream.

(Or she'll rip your tongue out at the seams.)'

the plots not overly bad, its rather jumpy in places and there is overall a good plot with a twist at the end. However horror isnt really where i want to lend myself with these images...

While its more a story of  ghosts and redeption but itsnt that the way for most of the legend based horror films? 

i think superstion lends itself to the idea of horror purely as they were created to scare people into doing what is conventional or scaring people einto certain idealologys.

superstitions list

list of superstitions

I found this list of superstitions, some of them are very well known... others not as much. below is a random selection of them:

BABY

To predict the sex of a baby: Suspend a wedding band held by a piece of thread over the palm of the pregnant girl. If the ring swings in an oval or circular motion the baby will be a girl. If the ring swings in a straight line the baby will be a boy.

BED

It's bad luck to put a hat on a bed.   If you make a bedspread, or a quilt, be sure to finish it or marriage will never come to you   Placing a bed facing north and south brings misfortune.   You must get out of bed on the same side that you get in or you will have bad luck.   When making the bed, don't interrupt your work, or you will spend a restless night in it.

BRIDGE

If you say good-bye to a friend on a bridge, you will never see each other again.

CLOVER

It's good luck to find a four-leaf clover.   Clover protects human beings and animals from the spell of magicians and the wiles of fairies, and brings good luck to those who keep it in the house.

COIN

It's bad luck to pick up a coin if it's tails side up. Good luck comes if it's heads up.

COUNTING CROWS

One's bad,

Two's luck,

Three's health,

Four's wealth,

Five's sickness,

Six is death.

CRACK

Don't step on a crack on a sidewalk or walkway.   Step on a crack

Break your mother's back.

EYELASH

If an eyelash falls out, put it on the back of the hand, make a wish and throw it over your shoulder. If it flies off the hand the wish will be granted.

FINGERNAILS

It is bad luck to cut your fingernails on Friday or Sunday.   Fingernail cuttings should be saved, burned, or buried.

FRIDAY THE 13TH - how did Friday the thirteenth become such an unlucky day?

  fear of Friday the 13th is rooted in ancient, separate bad-luck associations with the number 13 and the day Friday. The two unlucky entities combine to make one super unlucky day.   There is a Norse myth about 12 gods having a dinner party at Valhalla, their heaven. In walked the uninvited 13th guest, the mischievous Loki. Once there, Loki arranged for Hoder, the blind god of darkness, to shoot Balder the Beautiful, the god of joy and gladness, with a mistletoe-tipped arrow. Balder died and the Earth got dark. The whole Earth mourned.   There is a Biblical reference to the unlucky number 13. Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus, was the 13th guest to the Last Supper.   A particularly bad Friday the 13th occurred in the middle ages. On a Friday the 13th in 1306, King Philip of France arrested the revered Knights Templar and began torturing them, marking the occasion as a day of evil.  

In ancient Rome, witches reportedly gathered in groups of 12. The 13th was believed to be the devil.

  Both Friday and the number 13 were once closely associated with capital punishment. In British tradition, Friday was the conventional day for public hangings, and there were supposedly 13 steps leading up to the noose.   It is traditionally believed that Eve tempted Adam with the apple on a Friday. Tradition also has it that the Flood in the Bible, the confusion at the Tower of Babel, and the death of Jesus Christ all took place on Friday.   Numerologists consider 12 a "complete" number. There are 12 months in a year, 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 gods of Olympus, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 tribes of Israel, and 12 apostles of Jesus. In exceeding 12 by 1, 13's association with bad luck has to do with just being a little beyond completeness.

 FRIDAY THE 13TH - how is fear of the number thirteen demonstarted?   More than 80 percent of high-rises lack a 13th floor.   Many airports skip the 13th gate.   Airplanes have no 13th aisle.   Hospitals and hotels regularly have no room number 13.   Italians omit the number 13 from their national lottery.   On streets in Florence, Italy, the house between number 12 and 14 is addressed as 12 and a half.   Many cities do not have a 13th Street or a 13th Avenue   In France, socialites known as the quatorziens (fourteeners) once made themselves available as 14th guests to keep a dinner party from an unlucky fate.   Many triskaidekaphobes, as those who fear the unlucky integer are known, point to the ill-fated mission to the moon, Apollo 13.   If you have 13 letters in your name, you will have the devil's luck . Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Theodore Bundy and Albert De Salvo all have 13 letters in their names.

Superstitions as a whole

Superstition is a credulous belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge. The word is often used pejoratively to refer to folk beliefs deemed irrational, which is appropriate since irrational means "not based on reason". This leads to some superstitions being called "old wives' tales". It is also commonly applied to beliefs and practices surrounding luck, prophecy and spiritual beings, particularly the irrational belief that future events can be foretold by specific unrelated prior events.

Many superstitions and old wives tales are passed down from families, i know my mum always mentions some of them, while other more unusual ones are forgotten of ignored. For example when mentioning this project and an idea of breaking a mirror my friend got rather freaked out by the idea. Its funny how we still do some of these old wives tales that were created for nothing more then to scare people into doing certain stuff.
How many of these are still relivent to the modern world and how many are still remembered? in my notebook im going to write down as many superstitions i can remember or think of, and get my friends to do the same.

Be Inspired Comp

The Harman Be inspire photographic competition i found advertised on blackboard. The information on the website is as follows:

HARMAN PHOTO is delighted to announce the launch of a UK 2010 student competition.

THEME : URBAN CULTURE 'A SOCIAL DOCUMENTARY'

We have left the brief deliberately broad to encourage a diverse range of images. You could focus on lifestyle &
experiences, city to city, at home or abroad. Be inspired by Art /Music/Travel and the world around us.

We will be looking for images that are original, imaginative, contemporary and powerful.

Entries must be printed on either HARMAN CRYSTALJET RC or HARMAN by Hahnemuhle Fine Art Papers. *

Prizes:

• 1st Prize - Nikon D3100 digital SLR camera, plus 18-55mm lens worth over £500
• Runners Up - 2 prizes of £200 worth of products from www.harmanexpress.com
• College Prize - The college that submits the most entries will receive £500 worth of products from www.harmanexpress.com

The winning images will be displayed on our stand at the Focus on Imaging Exhibition 2011.

There is also a downloadable PDF that gives the full terms and conditions of the competition.  which ive read through and seems very reasonable. 

New project?

Well not really new, but adapting my project something new. i really like this idea of using superstitions with a mix of poes writing. Ive been looking around for a new competition and ive found one that would be approapritate to where my project is going. 

The new competition ive found to look into using i actually found on blackboard which was uploaded as a thing of interest to us.

be inspired

its the Harman Inkjet 'be inspired' compertition on the idea of Urban Culture. The first thing that jumped out to me was the idea of being inspired,  by music, travel, art they state

on the website by why not literature? 

the second was the use of culture, and the idea of superstitions is all to do with our history and culture. its whats passed down from mother to daughter, father to son.

And the way its urban culture, it makes me think of modernistic culture, the modern world. it made me think, 

how are these oldwives tales and storys and superstitions how are they relivent in modern day times?  And i think this is what im going to be exploring in my work from now. 

I enjoy the documentry style of photography without being to candid, so i may ask people what susperstitions they follow or believe in and photograph them doing it, or ask what ones are outdated. or even myself just look through a list of them and think which ones i feel are outdated and are no longer relivent and stage them.

inspiration from a lecture

A lecture i went to the other day had alot of relivence to the idea of taking a story and translating it into a photograph but without being obvious. It also inspired me as it showed the lecturer Zoe Childerley and her thought and development from initial idea to something completely different with her work abroad on her retreat style residency. It makes me think its ok for me to change my idea and its never to late to stop one idea and move onto a next. and one of the things she said inspired me to where i can lead my project to next. 
Zoes Project begun with a briefing from the museaum services where she was paired with a writer to create a collaberation. They started off lookin at the location he wrote in and in the surrounding areas, looking at the atmosphere of the forest and the comination of light and dark (initial photos below)

They then had a chance encounter in the wood with bees being attracted to the lights and caught a photo to which the writer wrote a short peice to go with. This image reminded her of Crewdsons early work and his 'natural wonder'  collection of photos. She then moved onto images using stuffed animals lent to her from the museum services, and started to look into fables and fairytales. She got into totally creating these pictures using animals based on fables, fairytales and then moving into superstitions and later onto storys from other cultures.

what really caught my eye was a photograph she had created from superstition based around a crow/raven. which obviously made me think of this project. the relationship between poes work and that of susperstition is one thats featured highly, he uses crows, black cats, stuff that is often associated to superstitions. 

Ive really been looking for a way out of this idea and rut ive been  stuck in and i think this idea of superstitions is a good one. it links to poe and i may even be able to use someofhis quotes along with images i create.

Too late?

i know i havent uploaded a post in a while, and im panicing about how little i have done so far for this module. and in all honestly i feel like i have total artistical block and the more i think about ti the more i panic and the more/ i worry about how little work or the lack of ideas im having and its having a very bad repercussion on me at the moment. After talking to my tutor in my tutorial last week it was clear to me that i need to focus in on my work, decided why it is im doing what im doing and what i want to acheive from it. I also need to kick my butt into gear and experiment even if it is bad. My problem is that im really usure that what i initially said i wanted to do, was not just me scraping the bottom for ideas and actually what i wanted to do. Reading these storys are giving me ideas but narrative pieces are not what im good at. I enjoy alot more conceptial or even abstract images and i think heres where my problems lies, how do i turn my idea of a narrative based around the works of poe into something that i can feel inspired and feel i can achieve in, and thats more me?

Im going to push myself to findout what it is i want to look at. Ive got a few artists and photographers to look at from the last lecture (zoey) who did work based on fairytales and folk storys but they werent really obvious which i liked. She also looked at susperstition which really interested to me as Poes work features heavily on objects, animals ect that feature heavily in susperstion, Maybe this is my way into something abit more me? 

I've kinda felt lost in the theory behind this, Ive been reading about the horror genre, the philosophical looks at the genre, books on gothic literature and the history of poe and i really think this isnt what i need to be looking at. I need to be focusing my ideas on this of photography, art, film, instillations. that which i can get my head around in relation to my work.

Im also going to have a look at different competitions. I think after this time debating about what i want to do ive realised that film isnt it and that my confidence and skillset is much better in photography.

My aims by my next tutorial 25th November is to have a new basis of my work, Alot more reaserch done looking at relivent works and decided on my 'brief' of choice as it were.

reading research and opinion about ideas.

So far I've been reading the selected tales book by penguin popular classics, and so far only parts of storys or selected phrases are standing out to me, I've read the duc de l omelette however much I like the story the fact that a lot of the dialog is in french, I need a translator for most! Ms found ina bottle was an interesting story but due to its location set makes it near impossible for me to use the whole story. The assignation is another great story with some great text that could be used, but is set around venice! full summerys are in my notebook.

Also got some great ideas for photos from this story that I couldalways experiment with, I guess part of me don't have the confidence in film to create a film and its not helping me to be subjective and allowing me to make choices! I think my next tutorial I shall discuss maybe doing film and photos till I choose where to take it, I'm stuggling with just film to continue my ideas and keep uip motivation.

Ive never really settled on a style of work and i really need to think  about who i am as an artist and what i want to getout of this. Am i doing this just for the sake of it or is it an actual idea of mine? this project is turning into me not feeling like i can do it, so i think i may have to reconsider my idea. I may do some brain storming in my notebook to discover what it is that i want to achieve for this project.

I've also got out a few books on the horror genre as a genre in film and literature. A lot more research and reading for me I think.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Janet Cardiff

Janet Cardiff was recomended to me the other day by my lecturer, about her peice entitled 'the murder of crows' which is ment to be linked to Edgar Allen Poes The raven. When looking at her work with George Bureres miller i was very intreaged, there instillations are very impressive and would love to go witness one in person. I could only manage to get short clips of it and not a hole peice but from what i have heard its a very interesting mix of sounds collected together, the peice ive heard is where there is a woman telling a story about a soldier who tried deserting his troops and they discuss how they tell him there gonna chop off his leg so he cant run again, but they do it to scare him as hes no use to them with one leg.  From what ive read of the peice as its 30mins long and i cant find more then 5min selections of it: the instillation is ninety-eight audio speakers mounted around the space on stands, chairs and the wall. The structure of the piece tries to mirror that of the illogical but connected juxtapositions that we experience in the dream world. One soundscape moves into another with an electronic dreamscape composition shifting into sound effects such as factory noises, crashing waves or birds wings and then into a guitar and strings composition then into a choir sequence and marching band. 

The title for the installation is ‘The Murder of Crows’, which means a grouping of crows. Sometimes when a crow dies, many other crows flock to the area around the dead bird and caw for over 24 hours, creating a ‘crow funeral’. The title also provides a thematic entry into the installation; a basis to create a work that becomes a metaphor for our political situation today. And features heavily around the ideas of dreams.

The Crow

In 1994 a gothic style horror film was released that soon turned into a cult movie. Following the death of its lead man during filming, the crow still remains a classic gothic horror movie. With even the title leaving a suggestion to the raven,  as crows and ravens are almost identical with very little to tell them apart. While the story is different in that of the crow then it is in thepoem of the raven, The crow even quotes lines from the poem by poe. The themes within the crow is that of vengence and that of a love lost, as Eric Draven (the crow lead Brandon Lee) rises from the dead on the aniversery of his and his fiancees brutal deaths to murder those who murder them. The crow name comes from the fact that they use the mythology that and to quote: 

'People once believed that when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead. But sometimes, something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can't rest. Then sometimes, just sometimes, the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right.'

 The crow brings Draven back to life, and aids his quest for revenge giving him almost super human powers. at one of the revenge murder sights Draven leaves the symbol of the crow outstretched in blood on the wall as a warning. 

With its classic horror undertones, with most scenes set in a rock club, graveyard and church and its use of music and quoting the likes of poe its no wonder this film became the cult it is today.
what i just love about this film is that while the plot isnt very similar there are hints and i love the way that the quote from Poes wrok was just added in very subtly and unless u knew where it was from you wouldnt of guessed where it was from.