Behind the Scenes of THE SVEET ESCAPE
Sharing the inspiration and process behind my latest project!
Hi guys!
If you’ve known or followed me for, I don’t know, any amount of time, you’ve definitely heard me talk about my BFF/sister/long lost twin, Kristen. We met in college and quickly bonded over our love of silly pop culture (Gwen Stefani and Talladega Nights are smack in the center of our Venn Diagram) and a mutual obsession with making big, campy, silly work. Kristen has modeled for me many times, assisted me MANY times, and over the past couple years we’ve collaborated on a few projects too, often with Kristen as a co-creative director and model. She’s an animator by trade but honey…she’s a genius by BIRTH.
We’ve been slowly but surely unveiling our new project, THE SVEET ESCAPE (lol stupid but also lol iconic) on Instagram and wanted to give a little BTS look at how we made this truly bonkers, complex project come to life. I’m gonna gab in bold text and Kristen will gab in italics. BUCKLE UP!
Concept
SO: I believe that I mentioned something offhandedly about wanting to do a project based on the Swiss Alps (and surrounding idyllic areas) and Kristen came to me with a super fleshed out idea- 4 videos, ala these that she spearheaded for our Aphrodite series, with supporting still images, based around a character that is traipsing through the Alps on a ridiculous, glamorous vacation.
KH: Savana and I are always constantly tossing around ideas. Sometimes huge grandiose productions that probably won’t be made for years (we’ve talked about making a film probably a million times lol), sometimes incredibly stupid / unhinged ideas that mostly are to make each other laugh, and sometimes they’re just a vague throw-away comment. This one happened to be the latter. Savana’s Swiss Alps comment sat somewhere in my subconscious for a couple weeks, and one day a That’s So Raven-style vision came to me. I believe the first thing I thought of was someone looking out onto a beautiful landscape and the camera zooms out to reveal that the scene was within a postcard. Soon after I pulled together a pitch and sent it to Savana.
SO: I obviously ran through the beautiful Milanote she made like a bull in a china shop and added a little sprinkle of surreal stupidity (like Pierre et Gilles, Moncler, and matte paintings from The Grand Budapest Hotel)
KH: I knew the vibe that I was going for: something reminiscent of surrealist portraits, taking inspiration from Grant Wood’s paintings and Ruud Van Empel’s absolutely wild photomontage. I loved the way in both of these examples the subject was almost uncomfortably confronting the viewer, backed by beautifully serene, unreal environments. I wanted it to be unclear what was real and what wasn’t. Sometimes I feel like I don’t consume enough media to effectively pull references, and this is where Savana really shines. She is 9/10 able to see what I’m going for and not only point me into the right direction, but pull in references that are unique and unexpected. Luckily the overarching theme of Swiss Alps and travel really gave us many directions to run with this!
SO: I am nothing if not a media consumer.
Shoot Day
SO: We prepped ideas, Kristen made storyboards for videos, we assembled a team, and did the damn thing. It was a one day shoot (and Kristen and I pre-lit the day before- we shot this in my parents’ basement.) entirely on green screen. We lit everything with my Arri tungsten lights that I’ve written about before. When we did a camera test the day before with my Canon 6D, it looked BEYOND crunchy- I don’t know a whole lot about shooting video on DSLRs so we were a little like…um what are we gonna do with this Nokia-looking footage. We ultimately decided to shoot on Kristen’s iPhone because it has 4K capabilities. Shot on iPhone slay! All of the stills are shot on my 6D.
Post Production
SO: To me, post production is the true gag of this project. I’ve obviously been collaging for a long time, Photoshopping for a long time, etc. But damn did this push me to get better at image selection and cleaner compositing. Allow me to be a huge nerd for a sec and say that Photoshop 2022’s selection tools are LIT- the refine hair tool, the refine edge brush…they made my life so much easier.
We pulled most of our images from my archive (which I talk about in detail in the Q&A section of this newsletter), old scanned postcards, the MET’s open access archive, Unsplash, and pulled like 10 from Adobe Stock for the more difficult images to source.
KH: The collaging/compositing aspect of this project was both the most exciting and the biggest beast. It would make or break this shoot. I first mocked up each shot in Photoshop quite sloppily. When it finally got somewhere I was happy with, I’d export each element as a png (often broken up by foreground, midground, background, animated elements, etc), pull them into After Effects with the green screen footage, and start adding all the motion, effects, and color correction there!
It’s easy to fall into simply finding a photo of a sky for the sky, a different photo of mountains for the mountains, etc etc. It still looks kinda cool collaged together in this way, but it’s less inspired. We really pushed for that more textural quality by using not only photos for elements, but oil paintings, linen postcards, vintage ink illustrations, Swiss architecture, and more. It really gives them that oo ah sensation!
SO: Really all there is to say now is that we tinkered with these bitches for weeks to get compositions right (always the part that takes the longest). Then I handmade a couple collages- the ribbon and tiny flowers on the border of image #2 are from Etsy (I frankenstein-ed them into a garland). In image #3, the frame is from an antique store, and the woodgrain background is a stock image that I had printed large at Walgreen’s. For the rest of the collages, I just worked them out in Photoshop- lots of gaussian blurs and masking. Kristen and I constantly sent things back and forth workshopping how to make them strong/cohesive.
KH: We almost worked in opposite methods. I come from a background in film/television animation where pre-production is everything. Each scene has to have mood boards, color tests, sketches, storyboards, rough animation, etc before any production can begin. This is obviously beneficial in a lot of ways, but sometimes it can back you into a corner because you can’t look at possibilities beyond what you’ve already planned out. I went in with everything pre planned and sketched out, while Savana went into her collages with no real plan (no shade lol, I aspire to work in this way more). This actually worked out really well for us because we were forced to make the two methods come together cohesively. It allowed me to get a bit more abstract in my interpretation of the storyboards I made, while it gave Savana something to extrapolate and reimagine.
The final videos and images are on our Instagram accounts! We’re so excited about them- it feels good to have been working on our collaborative style/technical abilities for so long and to bring them all together in such a fun project. GODDESS BLESS OUR TEAM, who truly brought this to life-
Talent: @saralynnslagle
Styling: @hannahjdotco
Makeup: @essentialsartistry
Hair: @audrey.heartburrrn / @your.mane.thing
Artist management & production: @creatingmckenzie
Now….somebody cool and nice, please hire us to do a music video. THANKSSSSS!
Thanks for reading and for the kind words on the series. I appreciate you guys! Talk soon.
