Model Behaviour

The hell assignment of shooting a bunch of half naked women before a fashion show.

After only 30 minutes of non-quality sleep I managed to drag my self over to set for the 7am crew call. My brain felt like Jello but I managed to get through the eleven hour day. I actually managed to leave an hour early thanks to the AD saying that I didn't have to stay the standard twelve hours. An ordinary human would have probably gone home to sleep. I ended up going to the St. Lawerence Market where Andrew Majtenyi was having his fashion show. A few weeks ago he asked if I could take pictures to help him "record" his event. I almost forgot about this until Darryl had to work on a video for the show all this week.

Not being familiar with fashion shows, I was amazed that the show only lasts for about 10 minutes. Over 400 people were going to pack a room for 10-15 minutes? This seemed a bit nutty. So I figured I'd get to the show, shoot the models going down the runway then go home. When I got there an hour early I wondered what I was going to do. Help with rigging? Sit and wait for the show to start?

I had my name on a list that let me in. Andrew's head was poking out from behind a curtain. He saw me and told me to go to the changing area and start taking pictures. What? Was that a bunch of wax in my ears? The sleep and dating deprivation had finally taken it's toll. I was imagining crazy stuff.

I had to verify what he just said. "What do you want me to shoot exactly?". "The girls. Shoot the girls getting dressed and made up. Shoot everything." Didn't have to hear that twice. Just to make sure I didn't piss him off with disobedience I whipped out the camera and began shooting wildly at the first half naked model trying to squish into some kind of plastic pant things.

"Pant things", now there's a term in the fashion industry that will point out that you should really not be taking part in any of this. But if a picture is worth a thousand words then here a few hundred pictures are worth no words at all. I guess I was concentrating so much on getting good shots, a large number of shots from various angles of the room and subject matter, all the models, and make up artists just assumed I'd been doing this for years. I mean hey they saw me talking to the designer after all. I was given the stamp of approval.

I thought my cover was blown when a model actually looked at my ID tag on my camera bag. Instead of jumping up and screaming imposter (or something to that effect) looked perplexed when it read "Visual Effects Supervisor", shrugged to the other models who I guess were wondering who I was as well, then somehow maybe thought they had read it wrong and didn't want to look again now that I was eyeing them. Like sheep in headlights they just posed thinking I wanted to take their picture.

One make-up artist asked what kind of model shoots I do as he hadn't seen me before in the fashion industry. I didn't really think about that question to hard and told him the first thing to come to mind. Since I've really only been getting the tiny gigs doing the punk band and rapper circuit I told him bands (not really indicating I did it professionally or just as a hobby for the most part). He gave me his card and said if I do a shoot with a band (like the Rollings Stones) to give him a call. He would make the trip to toronto just for me. I heard he just got back from Thailand doing three suimsuit shoots. Sports Illustrated, Playboy and something else. Hmmmm.... yes. If I shoot Shania Twain, AC/DC, or U2 I'll have to keep him in mind.

The make up on these models was put on pretty thick. For you readers wondering, yes, there were male models there as well and as a side note not all male models are gay. But getting back to the point I was trying to make... The first thing I noticed, on their faces anyway, were the eyes! They just jumped right out at you. The black stuff (mascara and eye liner) added so much contrast to the whites of the eyes. Kind of like being surrounded by women in the Robert Palmer video, "Addicted to Love".