Friday, November 18, 2011

E-motions In-motion: xfxthemag.com

A collaborative project developed by Angeline Moura and myself for xfxthemag.com Our (self-written)brief was "to capture urban movement, light, shape and femininity" that matched the pacing of a soundtrack composed by ObliqueSound

The shoot was done over a few hours on the streets of Soho and Oxford Circus, London as a large selection of stills. Initially we were tried getting movement and motion into both the model and the surrounding scenes, but there was something just-not-working. So instead of pursuing what felt more and more like trying-too-hard, we hit on the idea of having Angeline stand as still as possible and let the buses and traffic of Oxford Circus provide the movement in the scene. A couple of test shots and we were all happier with where we were going. It was then a case of waiting for the #55 bus to come along and provide the 2 second exposure background. Predictably, they never came when they were supposed too, but true to form, there were usually at least 3 of them in short succession.





Lighting was mainly the massive amount of ambient that's around London in the evening. But this was complemented with a brolly on a 580exII to give an burst of fill for Angeline detailing.

The majority of the Oxford Circus shots were on the 5D mkII which, even although the final file was rendered at full HD (1080p,) allows for some serious cropping from the massive 21mp (5616 × 3744px) raw images.


The still images from the shoot were composited in After Effects with timing driven by the audio from Henry. (AE is not the ideal tool for this, I know, but it worked. Slowly.)

Check out xfxthemag.com for details, posts on femininity in design and more.

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