A few weeks ago I wrote a breakdown of my shoot with Tanya Burr for Tanya Burr Cosmetics. It was a great shoot, but the promotional photos weren't all we shot. We also shot 13 short videos for the Tanya Burr Cosmetics Instagram account. Tanya is opening the 12 doors of a giant version of her calendar every other day in the run up to Christmas, with exciting prizes to be won behind every door.
I'm going to chat a little bit about how we filmed the videos, some of the issues I came across and how we dealt with them.
It was very exciting to see the giant calendar in person, after weeks of talking about the practical aspects of the shoot. The calendar was moved in to position (then readjusted to suit lighting) and the prizes placed behind each door.
Whilst I own photographic lighting, I hired large, constant video lights for the videos. I decided to unpack and set up the video lights whilst we had time in the morning and I'm really glad I did. The main light turned out to not have a matching stand attachment, so phone calls and emails were made to have a replacement sent out.
We used Kino Flos, which I've used before on a documentary film. They're fairly light weight for their size, offer consistent, constant light and the bulbs can be changed to change the colour of the light, and they don't produce much heat - really important when someone will be standing in front of them for hours.
I had two 4ft 4 bank Kino Flo positioned diagonally towards Tanya and the calendar, and a 10 bank Kino Flo directly facing Tanya. I positioned white polyboards either side of Tanya and the calendar to reflect light on to the sides.
We shot the video on a Canon 5D Mark III with a 17-40mm f/4.0 lens, on a Manfrotto 229 head on a Gitzo Studex Carbon 5540LS tripod. It was a big, sturdy tripod to keep the camera stable with no shake.
The room was quite big and therefore quite echoey, so we used a lapel mic (a small mic that clips onto the wearer) to minimise the amount of echo we would record. It also turned out that the studio was under an airport flight path, so there was frequent stopping to wait for planes.
It was a really fantastic shoot, it was wonderful to work with Tanya again and great to meet and work with the team at SLG. The competitions are still running on the Tanya Burr Cosmetics Instagram, so head on over to enter!
Behind the scenes photos by Holly Rose Stones.
S x