Working With Live Models
Planning a live model shoot and planning some excellent tableaux. I got the idea from an acting friend to take one model and dress him up four ways. We’ve got four different “types” mapped out. There is an Everyman, a “Obama” type, a Las Vegas gambler, and a religious right-wing zealot. We will be doing video and I will be taking screenshots from the MP4 files.
Video is one step up from stock shots, but video is where microstock sites are heading, every one of them. Getting a fixed setting makes composition easy. But working with sound adds to the challenge. One model and four costumes means four times as many potential microshots. But video doesn’t allow full frame capture of everything at 30 frames per second. Lots of incidence of posing to browse through and edit and make the most of.
There is a temptation to write some dialogue, court the role of screenwriter. For the various roles have gathered some “lines” on index cards so the model/actor can step into character while we are still getting our grips. Various angles of light and shadow and even changing the position of the props until visual artifacts are eradicated will take work.
Because I am using the same actor and mostly the same scene, to bring out variance and contrast in the shots I will alter the posture and angle of the model in counterpoise to the previous shooting. Straight reverses will refer to exactly the opposite, this would make an effective visual presentation if the video is edited with these shots intercut together.
Model above looks completely “genuine”. This is a great shot for sites about employment, food service, food safety, or other tags. Â But there is a realism that crosses over into advertising. if you can straddle that line, you can get some very realistic looking microstock shots.
