aitch
Straight up, one of my worst professional shoot experiences.
Crazy part is that it had nothing to do with the celebrity or their PR. I was booked for this job when I was hungover in the back of a Mercedes Sprinter driver through Cannes, France. Can I help do some commercial stills for a big brand in 3 days time? Yeah sure. The pay wasn’t great, but it was more money than usual so I took it.
I should have known it was wrong from the start. The production company asked me for shoot ideas, I felt they should probably have creative sorted for something less than 3 days out from shooting. I put together something silly. The shoot was all about festivals, and they wanted Aitch, the face of the campaign to be doing “festival” type stuff”. One of my references was someone eating a pizza, the cheese all stretchy and long being pulled from the base. Being somewhat of an experienced festival goer I wanted to do this as one of my creatives. So I made a board of images, explained what I’d want to do. Get the green light. Amazing. So there I am at home, carefully putting string cheese onto a frozen pizza, cooking it and seeing if I get that overlay long cheese effect. Holy shit I do. Nothing can go wrong from here.
Now there’s a reason photographers hate sharing talent time with video - because they take all the time. This was no exception. I arrived with two assistants, because I’m trying to look professional and like I do this every day. We are asked to wait in the hallway because video have run over slightly. Nearly 2 hours later, they say I can come in and start setting up. But the talent needs to leave in 30 mins. Ok cool. This was my first time having to look someone in the eye who is responsible for making my life super stressful.
I start off shooting my ideas, the person who signed them off is in the room, but there are also more “grown ups” in the room. I should have found out who they were, that’s the polite thing to do. But I was too busy trying to get some sort of decent looking lighting set up. In hindsight I should have left my assistants to it and done the rounds. We get to shot 2, the one before my big pizza reveal and an obviously important person asks “what are we shooting?!”. It’s awkward. I realise that the production company never shared my ideas with what I’m quickly learning is the rep from the big brand we’re shooting for. Glances are exchanged. It feels awkward, even the chatty talent on set feels it. I mentally abandon the pizza, that isn’t going to go down well.
I make the lighting super boring and flat. I use the 10 minutes I have left shooting him in a chair holding the product, standing holding the product, smiling holding the product, not smiling holding the product. It looked as boring as it sounds, but it was the only way in the moment I felt I could rescue something. After the shoot the production company didn’t pay me for months. I had to chase and lump on late fees. They tried to argue the fees, I held firm and they paid me eventually.
I learnt a lot from this shoot.
