Putting together a promo photoshoot in an unconnected setting to produce a convincing promo image takes a little bit of lateral thinking sometimes.
I love location work! It works my old brain to come up with solutions and when you work with other creatives the brain muscles flex with ideas pinging around the set.
On a cold, windy and wet March night in Glasgow we gathered in a location that was booked to give us a free use of a Cabaret Bar for a couple of hours. There are a few interesting places in Glasgow that could fit the Cabaret/Speakeasy setting but we settled for an old crusty joint called Wild Cabaret.
The venue had been booked based on past experience and everyone turned up in 1920s period costume ready to go, however, no sign of Wild Cabaret at that address. Instead we were faced with a new look Wild Cabaret. Nothing resembling even a tame cabaret! A new look, fresh sports bar now replaced what we had expected. Not just an ordinary sports bar, an Irish Sports Bar, called Grace’s.
I must admit even my flexible creative brain was feeling the strain of the wall to wall massive TVs playing golf, football and rugby 5 feet tall!
As Theatre Alliance‘s cast gradually filled the venue in their flapper girl outfits complete with sparkles and feather and pearl head pieces, I waited to see the looks on their faces as football highlights played all around the walls.
Needless to say there were a good few puzzled looks and WTF comments!
A word in the non-Irish barman’s ear solved the TV problem and all the walls turned a bit darker. Plenty of Celtic graphics were still everywhere I looked but there wasn’t much I could do about them except keep them out of shot as much as possible.
So on to creating the images. This required almost all of the ambient light to be be cut out using my camera settings. My lovely assistant, Scott, handling the gear into place and I used off camera flash to get the light on my subjects.
A rather sparkly mirror-tiled tunnel was a bit of saviour to keep the Speakeasy theme and I think it was a bit of a relic of the original venue that escaped the Irish conversion.
I had my smoke machine with me in the hope of creating a bit of smokey speakeasy atmosphere but the barman advised that it was a bit of a hassle to turn off the very sensitive smoke alarms. I’m always nervous with smoke machines in venues, even though they are completely safe to use, I didn’t want to foot the bill for a visit from Glasgow’s Fire Brigade.
Here are a few images that I thought worked well. The main image was created from several images. With the camera settings only picking up the light from the string of stage lights, I asked Scott to position the second flash above each person in the group. These individual images were then brought into Photoshop and merged to form a well lit group shot without the distractions of the venue .
A wee bit of Photoshop smoke texture to give a more realistic appearance finished the main image off.
You can see Scott moving around everyone with the hand held flash in the image below.
Here’s some of the fabulous stars in front of the mirrored tunnel and other spots around the venue. I hope you agree with me that they are all stunning.
I’m looking forward to this performance which tells the true story of one of the characters later in the year.
Many thanks to the staff at Grace’s who were awesomely accommodating and helpful and of course to the cast of the upcoming show and to my tech, Scott, for the BTS shots and lugging equipment to save my old back.
M.
MARTIN CLARK PHOTOGRAPHY 