Halloween Photoshoot: Behind the Scenes

Our first and most successful shoot of the year came at Halloween - but it took a whole load of planning to get there. Here's a step by step guide to how we decided upon this years theme, clothes and all the intricate details that make up a great image - a taster before I reveal pictures next:

STEP 1: MOODBOARDS

First of all, we had a meeting to discuss everyone's potential ideas for the shoot, collating a host of spooky themes for discussion. Whilst ideas such as 'Zombarbie' and 'Vampy Halloween' were banded about, it was the theatrical surrealism of a Tim Burton-esque shoot that drew everyone in. Once a theme was decided, some pictures for inspiration needed to be utilised for building the rest of the shoot off - those of which can be seen just below:

Starting off in an Alexander McQueen direction...

But this was decided to be a little difficult to execute, so other ideas were explored...

It was decided that theatrical makeup was definitely an underlying theme to what people liked; so after looking for that influence with a more executable idea - Tim Walker's shoot for Burton was a winner:

STEP 2: PEOPLE AND POSITIONS

After the theme was decided, and photos were selected for inspiration - the next step was making sure everyone had a role; and that everyone and everything we needed would be in one place for the date of the shoot. The roles we had (and always do for each one) were MODELS, PHOTOGRAPHERS, CREATIVE DIRECTORS, MAKE UP ARTISTS, STYLISTS and the optional roles of HAIR STYLISTS, SET DESIGNERS and BLOGGER.

This was all decided (and the credits for these positions can be found on the picture post!) and then the real work began. Picking clothes to bring for a fitting session ended the first meeting; with a browse through our sponsor New Look's website:

STEP 3: FITTINGS, TRIALS AND FINALISATION

With the first meeting of consolidating initial ideas finished, a second was arranged to get our newly appointed models into the clothes. Everyone bought things that were deemed black enough and appropriate for the theme; and Anna and Will bought a selection of New Look clothes that were previously decided on. It was here that the ideas for make up were tested and finalised, where the stylists had free reign on putting people in clothes and accessorizing them, and where we took the pictures for remembering the complete looks. Here's a few examples of the things we put together:

As you can see - we played with the camp side of Halloween alongside keeping a fashion edge, as we wanted this merge of fakery and fine art to make something strange and interesting for the spooky scene. Location trips were made (as this was fairly limited due to transport issues, one was found pretty quickly that everyone could get to on campus) and everything was drafted out to make the photoshoot as easy breezy as possible.

STEP 5: PROFIT

That's it! The next step was the day itself, where models and make up artists arrived to a pre-booked room on Highfield for 11:00, and photographers a little later for the sake of not leaving anyone waiting. After setting up the natural scene with creepy webs, models went out as soon as they were dressed and made up to be thrown around by photographers into as many weird positions as possible.

So - that's that, and the next post will be the outcome of two week's of planning and organising a huge group of people. After this taster, the pictures will be up very soon, and they're definitely worth the wait - watch this space! FashSoc Love xox