Test Shooting

So last week we were unable to take out a camera as I mentioned before. Instead of doing nothing but moaning, over the weekend Emma and myself enlisted our housemate Lauren as our cut guinea pig. She loved it. We tried out different make-up looks, dressed her up and filmed a few effects.

Makeup

We did a different style of makeup on each side of Loz's face in order to compare and see which was more effective and appropriate. We started with giving her a pale, ghostly base, which created a hollow glow rather than chalky dust. We then created a sallow look in her cheeks by shading in the hallows with a light grey powder and then dusting the cheekbones with a pearly shimmer.

On the right-hand side of Lauren’s face, we focused on strong eyebrows. We used mascara to backcomb her brows to create a messy, zig-saw look. We extended them with liner and exaggerated the front part of the brow by the bridge of her nose. We then added powder to create a moody yet distinguished look. The result was slightly Robert Pattison-esq but teamed with long, wild hair, it had potential to look deranged but still ‘fashion-y’ enough to incorporate into our spot.

The other half of the face had a focus on dark, ghoul-like eyes influenced mainly by Gareth Pugh. Firstly we lined both the upper and lower lids. We then filled in the socket with powder and outlined with liquid black to create a thicker-than-Winehouse flick, which was also extended and thickened. We then shaded the side of her nose with grey powder to encircle the eyes with a mist of black and tinted her brow with grey and a small etching of black near the nose. The result was a sinister look that I really liked.

Styling 

As this was only a mock shoot, we didn’t fuss too much over the styling. Loz wore a billowing, crinkled black maxi dress with a laced shawl around her shoulders and some black mesh in her hair.


Shooting

We practiced a mirroring effect that recreated the creepy scene from The Shining. By chance, as we turned the lights off, Emma clicked the camera, causing it to flash and take a photo. I was still filming and the effect was brilliant on-screen. The flash created a red hue, which exploded into a fuzzy, strobe light-esq burst of light that looked like a fuzzing television. We recorded the effect consecutively and asked Lauren to get closer to the camera every time the flash had subsided. The result was a creepy, distorted clip that managed to incorporate all of our prescribed and chosen elements such as flashing lights and mirroring. I roughly edited the piece, getting rid of our nattering and placed our unique track (created by Chazza) over the top. The result was really good considering it was all homemade.

Below is us experimenting, I will upload the final clip after the presentations tomorrow.

Untitled from Grace Brennan on Vimeo.