'Scopophobia' Production

Scopophobia holds a lot of personal issues for my self-esteem and confidence that have been translated into something I find beautifully disturbing. The process of shooting a naked model takes planning and consideration, but luckily the model was a close friend of mine and had no problem telling me if she was uncomfortable. Prior to the shoot I was nervous about how the product would sit on the skin, even after testing. But the process of layering Aquacolor, plaster spray, talc powder and baby oil has produced the exact desired effect. 

We faced many issues within the photo shoot and I was completely exhausted by the stress afterwards. Firstly, the modelling bulbs would not work on any of the studio's lighting equipment and there was no time to try and test each bulb one by one. The modelling bulbs play such a vital part in the production of a successful gel lit shoot as the show exactly where the light is going to hit the model's skin. So we resorted to a very slow trial and error method by aiming the lights onto the model's body and just shooting. After what seemed like hours (days) we eventually began to get the lighting I had in mind. But during this process, the model was tiring and the product started to rub off the model and even create irritation on her sensitive skin. We were really against the time here! 

Once we mastered the lighting the images were unbelievable! The texture of the skin was haunting and the tiny hair strands and goosebumps could be seen. Once we knew the lighting was perfect we were able to completely smash out the images. We then faced the challenge of setting up lighting for the filming. Because the lights had no constant light to them we had to use the filming lighting. Not only would this mean that the set up would need to be completely redone, but it meant that it was going to be near impossible to create the same lighting effect. The filming lighting also produces a great amount of heat, too much for the thin sheets of acetate to take without melting. So these were constantly turned on and off throughout the process which massively delayed everything. But we did get there...eventually. And I am more than happy to say the least. 

I then faced the next task of getting the images to the exact style during postproduction with the photographer. Although I do love other creative input, his ideas were very forceful and I had a very specific style in mind. After a slight struggle, I managed to arrange a time to sit down with him, choose the images and explain exactly how I would like them to be edited. But this was not the end of it. It then took a very long time to get the images back which created a massive delay in my production schedule and placed a lot of pressure on me to turnover my outcome quickly.

The film footage aim is to better represent the mood of the character. I feel as though this was captured well within the filming and editing. But as you can see, it was extremely difficult to generate the exact lighting after the change of set up, colours and quality of filming. As a result, I am not as satisfied with this outcome as much as the others, but I am still in love with the unusual and unique creative concept I have achieved.