It’s been a long long time since posting on here, the majority of my work these days is posted straight to my Facebook however after a whole month of organising different character shoots, headshots, rehearsals and loads of other stuff I am finally done with one of the biggest single projects I’ve undergone.
It began back in early October with our first cast shoot. It was clear from the beginning that directors Becca Simmons and Kate Pasola had high aspirations for this production. Costumes, hair and makeup were so on point, Campbell Keith (Fester) would be sculpted into a bald man more than once over the following weeks, Ari D’Hedever (Grandma) would age 40 years periodically while the magnificent Scott Meenan (Gomez) and the stunning Melani Carrie (Morticia) stood centre stage seeping class.
After the first shoot there was a certain buzz around the publicity – the poster quickly gained a mere 200 likes and reached an incredible 14,000 on the company’s Facebook page. This left me a little worried because 7 days later we had another shoot in the same location and standards were very high. I decided then to reach out into the unknown. A package arrived from HQ back in Sussex containing an old Canon 350D which I couldn’t have been happier about. For the readers who know a little about the Canon series you might be saying ‘Oh but even my old Iphone has more megapixels than that’ and I admit it was quite tricky switching from my trusty 5D mk II. However, this little gem is no ordinary camera, it is retrofitted with an infrared sensor..
I started playing around with this in the summer and the results were phenomenal. The sensor captures light at the top end of the visible spectrum and the low end of the infrared range so you still get the same shadows and sunspots as a normal camera but colour is a thing of the past. These were a few of my test shots:
Anything alive and green gets a fresh coating of frost and people are transformed into pearly white porcelain figures.
The second shoot commenced a week after the last with the autumnal colours all but gone so the stage was set for the infrared dream. The cold weather was a hindrance as it is whenever you have models waiting in costumes designed for the stage but we quickly got through the lot producing some incredibly original shots supplemented with a few of the Beineke family from my 5D and our wonderful filmographer, Sally Pendleton.
The long day was then brought to an end with a couple of en mass ancestor shots. Big thank you to everyone involved with this, it’s a photographers worst nightmare is to organise a large group of such individually strong characters and maintain the focus so well done!
From then on things just fell into place. The company held a very successful fundraiser at Boteco Club featuring acts from Edinburgh Footlights and Edinburgh Show Choir as well as songs from the production. DJ Pasola followed up with some cult classics to finish the night off.
On the run-up to the last couple of weeks of rehearsing it was time for our headshot shoots. Having worked with Becca before I had a feeling that she would be after something slightly quirky when it came to the headshots and I was not wrong. The take was, look as mentally disturbed/scarred/shocked as possible and at times I didn’t even know what I was getting people to do. This shoot was simple yet amazingly effective. I used two bedside lamps rested on chairs to vary the height as my lighting equipment, a pin board in a study room as our background and the pure nuttiness of the crew and cast.
The production is on all this week with the last showing on Saturday (21st November) and reviews have just started rolling in with a big 4 stars from All Edinburgh Theatre to kick it off. I doubt you’ll be able too pick up any tickets on the door for this show, it’s already being dubbed as one of the company’s best performances to date.
This doesn’t come as a surprise for me having seen the scrutinising effort and detail that has gone on behind the scenes. From professional hair and make-up artists to costume designers who made the majority of the costumes virtually from scratch; huge amounts of talent were demonstrated here and it couldn’t have been done from a more modest group of people!
My photography journey with these guys finished on Monday with the dress rehearsal and you can tell that these guys have performed with each other before. I won’t give any spoilers because you should go and see this one but the way each character bounces off of each other is simply flawless. Great energy, great laughs, great month! Hope you all smash it these last few nights!!
Oliver Buchanan Photography 