Bringing The Outside In,
With Mamas & Papas
A location shoot, re-imagined.
Shooting Products Out Of Season
How do you shoot future seasonal products and garments, out of season?
One answer of course is to shoot on location, finding an appropriate climate or setting that compliments the look and feel of your designs. But there is another way, you can bring the outside in!
Build a location, a realistic setting, inside our room set studio. The benefit of shooting a location shoot indoors? It’s all about having control. Designing your set, your ideal location, exactly as you want it. From the building style and chosen materials, to the paint colour and finishing touches.
Then being able to shoot without the inconvenience of either the weather, or other people getting into shot.
The Brief
Two distinctive looks were required; an autumnal woodland and a then a snow laden cabin scene to showcase cosy winter and Christmas clothing and accessories.
We were to build, style and shoot a children’s clothing brand across the two themed outdoor location sets, over a week in early July.
With the brief in place, models and hair & make up booked, all we had to do was build the set to be ready to shoot!
The Set Build
Taking almost the entire room set studio, a full size log cabin was created with 'stone' chimney, 'slate' roof and wood burning stove. A wooden bridge was built over a water filled stream and fallen tree trunks were nestled into several tonnes of bark chips. Lastly around fifteen 20ft Christmas trees were brought in to give the foreground structure which would later be supplemented by further scenery in post production.
In the space of a week, what had been a featureless studio was transformed to a Narnia-esque wonderland.
Home Comforts, On Location
The benefit of a studio setting meant we could host our client, child models and chaperones with ease. Hospitality and studio facilities on hand, making sure everyone was comfortable and well attended.
A controllable environment enabled focus on other creative areas, thinking space to concentrate on what was required from models, photography and post production. The studio location provided breathing space, something that you can’t always get from a busy distracting location shoot.
Being able to make selections and suggestions on set as the shoot happened, viewing images as they appear on the large desktop monitor meant we could review and direct the shoot with ease.
Post production were available to review the captured images on set, talk through the CGI options and final look of the images.
"A combination of real fir trees, brought in from our local Christmas tree farm, and clever creative retouching from our in-house team, made an incredibly realistic woodland environment."
Keri Gray - Production Manager
Autumn Into Winter
The beautiful autumnal woodland then became a winter wonderland overnight, with the application of 3 different types of fake snow to achieve the perfect natural snowfall.
Snow for sticking to trees, snow for sprinkling on buildings and fences and snow for creating drifts
All on one of the hottest days of the year of course.
The toughest thing? Persuading a 2 year old to keep a bobble hat and winter coat on in nearly 30 degree heat!
Post Production Magic
For the final part in the process, bringing the desired look and feel of a realistic location shoot to life, the creative baton was confidently placed in the hands of Post Production.
Generating the illusion of a location, our creative retouch team introduced further background details and applied grading effects to produce an outdoor look and feel.
The transformation from studio photography through to the final location imagery is magical and never fails to produce a ‘wow’ moment for our clients. For once, with this process, what you see on set is a really small percentage of what you get!
Why not see what we can do for you?
If the thought of co-ordinating a location shoot brings you out in a cold sweat, why not think about bringing your location to our studio? Have a chat with our Production team to find out what is possible without travelling hundreds of miles.
