This past weekend I was fortunate to shoot the fabulous ReeRee Rockette and her gorgeous lipstick range called Rockalily.

I had found ReeRee on twitter [the best place in the world to meet amazing people] via a friend of mine and one visit to her site and I knew I wanted to work with her. Her personality infused brand, her unabashed & opinionated blog posts [GOOD] and her delicious Rockabilly inspired style and product range all added up to LOVE LOVE LOVE.

And as it happened, ReeRee wanted to replace the video she shot for her lipsticks, so match made in heaven right? I approached her by email, we got to chatting and she agreed to work with me to see what I could produce for her lipstick range.

SCHEDULE & SETUP :: We scheduled to start about 10:30am hoping to finish about 2:30pm, which we surprisingly managed. As with any professional shoot, set up and preparation is super important. I hired kit from a camera operator colleague [that I work with in TV land] and although we went through the lighting set up when I collected the kit, this still proved to be a challenge. Lighting pretty much ALWAYS is. ReeRee will attest to me swearing at the lighting stands, the clamps and the one light that decided it wasn’t gonna work. Still, I managed to get enough light from one main light + a top light [this is the light you sometimes see attached to the top of the camera]

KIT USED :: For those of you that might be interested in what I used: Sony Z1 camera; HD Flipcam; 2 camera tripods, 1 lighting tripod, 1 x Lowel light, Audio Technics top mic, Sony toplight, 3 Sony infoLithium batteries, Sennheiser headphones, 3 x 60 DV tapes. I also had a softbox lighting kit but faffed around with it so much during setup and still couldn’t get it right, so proceeded without it.

SHOOT - THE PRODUCTS :: I started with the product shots, the lipsticks themselves. There are 10 in the range, 4 core and 6 special edition lipsticks. We shot them as 4 and 6 at a time. I used white card as a backdrop. I made a note when doing this in future, use BIGGER card or a pristine thick white sheet. The more white space you have to ‘stage’ the product the better.

SHOOT – MODEL :: I then moved on to shoot ReeRee herself, applying the lipsticks, so her customers can see how they apply and the colour they turn out. We had great fun with this, although ReeRee had to apply & remove lipstick many, many times so we could get the shots. Here we could have used a few models but this can take more time & cost more, something to consider for future shoots. I had also [mistakenly] assumed shooting ReeRee in the mirror would be easy-peasy. This was a challenge but I think we got it in the end.

I have no idea why I’m posing like that, I’m blaming it on concentration!

RESULT :: I’ve completed the rushes ingest [getting the footage into the edit] and the footage is looking pretty good despite my lighting worries and is ready for the edit. It’ll take me a good week or so to do a rough cut, add GFX, add titles, add music and get a rough cut to ReeRee. I’ll be editing on Final Cut Pro v 7.0.3. Once she has given me her changes and/or approved this cut, I’ll complete & export the finished QT file for her to upload to her site.

Overall it went really well, we had a laugh + one scary moment when ReeRee got lipstick ALL over the wall, so cue much frantic scrubbing & nervous laughter while we attempted to get it off the newly painted walls. We did, so *phew*.

NEXT :: I’ve set myself a task in my own business to only work with women whose business & brand I really gel with and ReeRee Rockette & the Rockalily brand is a perfect example of a small business woman, rocking it her way and blazing a red lipped, fabulous trail. I can only hope I get to work with more women owned & run small businesses like this in 2012.

ReeRee also blogged about her experience of the video shoot and I think she was pretty happy with what we got done, even though we were both pretty tired by the end of it!

Once I have delivered the final video to ReeRee and she has posted it on her site, I’ll post it here & on my client page for all to see.

My next shoot is at the end of this month, for an event called #ZOMGbloggersbash, which is an invitation only bloggers event, put together by ReeRee Rockette and Zoe of The LondonLipgloss. This is to launch a special edition of Rockalily lipstick called “ZOMG” and was created by ReeRee in collaboration with Zoe. The event will be attend by many British beauty, fashion and vintage inspired bloggers & small biz women plus performance/s by burlesque stars. Should be a fun event but as always, lighting will be my main challenge!

I’ll post the finished video for this event once complete.

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