SEARCH THE DARK Part 2 (SHOOTING YOUR PERFORMERS)

So we managed to build a set for the grand total of £12 and now the day came to shoot. Now unlike most shoots I've ever done which happen over the course of anything between 3 - 18 hours, this was  different kind of animal all together.

I wanted something very specific playing on the TV's, but that meant that I would have to shoot it before the day of the shoot. Originally I had figured out the whole thing to be shoot with our standard black back drop in our oversized living room, something that would have taken an hour or so. Then I got a mix of the song, it became obvious to me that I was going to need a bit more than just the TV stuff.

SEARCH THE DARK 
Search The Dark was the second single that we planned to release from our debut album 'Seven Rising', but there was a large shift in the band and after a couple of months of planning and talking about the direction of the band we decided that we wanted to collaborate with the amazing Heather Coulton. Search The Dark seemed the perfect choice and we decided to 'reboot' the song featuring Heather. 

A shot of our £12 set

Of course I had based the original concept on the original version, but the new mix changed things up a bit and this meant changing the idea ever so slightly.

We decided to make more of a feature out Heather and shoot the video side by side, so that she featured in the main shoot instead of just featuring on the TV's we'd sourced. So we tweaked the idea, but this of course meant that out 'set' would be needed a day earlier. 

In the name of efficiency it made sense getting Heather down to shoot all her stuff at the same time so that we had less to shoot the next day (more on why later). Of course featuring in the main shoot, Heather now had one of my favorite questions "What should she wear", I had something very specific in mind, But Heather didn't own anything like that and so my quest began to find the perfect outfit for the video.

Being a fan of the 80's in general, I wanted a Meatloaf-esque gothic looking night gown/dress, and we found the perfect one. It cost us just under £20, which through our budget up to £32. 

The shoot went well, the dress looked great and being a 2 part shoot there were alot of things to watch out for with our main focus being to make sure that the lighting matched for the next night. It was then that I had less than 15 hours to get the stuff that we had shot for the TV's edited and prepped to appear on the screens for the next night.

To Be Continued...