The Art Of CletuS

Evaluation. Major Project.

My original idea for this fashion/model shoot was to basically hire a hotel room and have a pretend party in there, really messing up the room with feathers, bottles, balloons etc. trashing the room in effect in a chaotic yet fashionable way. I intended to use an array of lighting focusing on soft lighting and pastel colours. After researching into the feather idea I found out that besides white goose feathers being rather expensive, the mess the room would be in would be horrendous. After speaking with someone who has done a similar shoot but using their friend’s hotel, he claimed it took over 3 hours to clean even with the use of 2 vacuum cleaners. With the hotel booking being very touch-and-go and factors changing with the hotel I thought id better not do the idea with the feathers, as I could be liable to complaints and damage charges. I decided to opt with just going with balloons. I filled the room with light pink and white balloons and asked to model to wear similar colours to the scene. The great thing about the room was that the colour scheme of the actually room fit perfectly with my colour scheme I had in mind, which is why I chose to use the Premier Inn on Kirkstall road.

My preparation at first seemed to go really well, I had organised models, assistants and a location within the first few weeks and my schedule was going accordingly. However in the following weeks approaching the shoot thing started to fall apart somewhat. The hotel called and said I couldn’t do the shoot, as it would have to go through the marketing section of premier inn. We later cleared this up, as I wasn’t shooting any promotional footage of photos for premier inn. People weren’t available to help with the shoot on the intended day of shooting so I had to postpone and postpone until eventually one of the models had to drop out due to work engagements. My driver/assistant was trapped in south Wales with food poisoning and I needed to start looking for someone else who was available. Luckily he was back and fit to help out for the shoot on the Thursday. Even more upsettingly was that I was supposed to attend a funeral on the Thursday which was the only day available that we could shoot on that was suitable for everyone and the dog died.

The shoot itself went really well, there was a light atmosphere and everyone seemed to have a good time as well as cracking down with the actual shoot and footage. The colours and lighting worked really well and I got some great shots from it. Ideally I would have liked to use a wider lens, maybe a 35mm or 20mm f2.8 as I found the 50mm difficult in some scenarios where there wasn’t enough room to get my ideal shot. This meant I sometimes had to resort to my 18-55mm,which was a bit too slow in some cases.

Postproduction of the video was made difficult as the full shoot was taken in one shot. Meaning I had to filter through an hours worth or so of footage to find some good content to use in the video. Amazingly though I was allowed to use Deadmau5’s latest track “Some Chords”. After asking him if it was ok on his Stickam account as he was live streaming he said it was ok to use the track for my production.

Next time I do a shoot I will organise a date and set it so I don’t have to get stressed worrying about people dropping out etc. ill commit to my original ideas more thoroughly and work around getting the shoot done to its maximum potential. Overall though I found the shoot to be a success and the results and experienced gained from the shoot will be beneficial to me in future shoots to come.