The Execution Stage pt 2 | Photoshoot prep

So now that we know what our creative concept is, we were then given a product that we had to use as the main prop/theme of our shoot. We were given makeup, which meant that we had to incorporate this into our shoot somehow. Since I am makeup obsessed, I was ready and rearing to go. 

For the next stage, we needed to come up with 5 key words that we felt reflected the elements that were present within the original shoot, in order to inform our photoshoot. These words were:

Degraded Glamour
Isolation
Intimacy
Grunge
Raw

We chose 'degraded glamour' because we felt that the shoot was inspired by a french photographer called Brassai, who was known for capturing the dirty/gritty side of behind the scenes at dance shows in Paris. I felt that Day portrayed a similar vibe within her shoot as all of the images looked as though they were backstage before a show. 

The next word we chose was isolation. Looking at the photoshoot, there were a group of women but there was one main girl that was always staring into the camera whilst the others just looked like props. When I was analysing the shoot, I thought that the message within the original editorial was that despite the fact that many people can be included within a show, there is always a main star and the focus will always be on them therefore we chose this word. 

The third word was intimacy. By this, we didn't mean romantic or sexual intimacy but the intimacy of a private or personal space such as backstage, which was the theme of the 'Lets Dance' editorial. Thats why we thought that a party scene  perfect as we wouldn't photograph the typical parts of a party that are conventionally photographed, but we would photograph parts of parties that are hidden and not usually seen such as doing drugs.

The last two words that we had was grunge and raw, which we wanted to use as a way to highlight the dark elements in the original photoshoot. We wanted to create the feeling of "grunge" through dark , smudged makeup and a dirty set up. However, we wanted to make sure we still had some feminine elements incorporated into the shoot to ensure that we didn't loose sight of the message from the original editorial. 

With all of this in mind, I decided to create a mood board of images in my sketchbook so that we had ideas when it came to the day of the shoot. As well as this, having visuals helped to inspire our thought process. 

Sketchbook Mood board

Apologies for this task being spread over so many blog posts, but I didn't want to make one extremely  lengthy one,  I thought it would be better to clearly distinguish each stage we went through so you could see our thought process. 

Thanks for reading.