BTS Anecdote Candles
Hello everyone! Someone please explain to me how it's already the middle of May by the time this post goes live!? Yes, I am writing to you from the past and saying hi into the future... What is 2022?!?! It's wild to me that Elle and I will be completely OOO from Weekend Creative for 2 weeks. This is the first time in our business history that we've *actually* unplugged from everything. Even during our 2 week holiday break, we usually check in here and there but this time, we're truly going to be "off the grid" as they say. So if you have a trip planned or some time off, I highly encourage you to try to unplug from your business. Everyone needs a break from time to time and we all deserve it. Thanks for coming to my ted talk, haha.
Anyway, we're back with another BTS post and while this shoot happened a little while ago, we felt like it was one of those client projects that we really loved working on and truly felt like we nailed it. Our client came to us wanting to shoot new images and GIFs for a capsule collection called "New Season, Old You" which contained 4 scents: Homebody, Hot Mess, Two Weeks' Notice and Wanderlust as well as some individual scents that weren't part of that collection. One of my favorite things about this particular shoot was getting to create some really fun, monochromatic scenes. It also felt like we were building "little worlds" for each candle and what we thought they would represent or embody. Let's get into some of the details, shall we?
This shoot took place earlier in February of this year and it consisted of one header, 6 still images, and 4 GIFs (and their final stills). Although it might have seemed like a fairly "easy" shoot, there was still a lot of planning involved (thanks Elle!!!!) which I truly believe made the shoot go by super smoothly. It might have been a half day to shoot all of the assets while the post production took about 1-2 hours per still and approx 4-6 hours per GIF. Since we've worked with this candle client for years now, I feel like we've definitely got a bit of a rhythm with them but one of the things that Elle mentioned to me that she felt she nailed this time around (with the capsule collection) is selecting one set design piece that flowed throughout the shoot in order to make everything cohesive. Because we're often shooting such different scenes for each candle, it can be a little hard to find the visual thread between every still (in a "capsule collection.") So for this shoot, Elle decided to make the neutral cream/off-white textured backdrop the unifying design which she made using a particle board and thin wooden tiles with spaces in between.
We also got to play with a lot of fun props this time around that Elle sourced from all over including Amazon, Target, and Afloral. All of the stills were pretty smooth sailing but once we got to shooting the GIFs, that's when we had to be pretty strategic, especially the GIF that involved the capsule collection. The whole "theme" of the collection is that it's a new season, AKA spring season, and so we used dried florals to show "growing" flowers and we worked our way backwards, shooting the florals at their full length and cutting an inch or two as we went along and snapping photos in between each "trim" which eventually when put all together, it would look like flowers growing.
One thing we decided to change up slightly was our lighting setup. We typically like to keep it simple with one strobe but we do have one white wall in our space that's generally where we like to put our table up against but this time I decided to see what our images would look like if we set up a softbox and pointed it towards the wall. We did have to bring up the power but it had a softer effect than our white bounce card and that was great for a more contrasted look while lifting up the shadows slightly. One thing I would like to start doing is experimenting with our lighting to see what works for us and what doesn't. It's all about learning over here!
Thank you for checking out and reading this behind-the-scenes post! To view some of the final work, you can click here. Be sure to check out the BTS photos from this shoot below and then tell us what you've been working on lately over in our Slack channel :)
Is it the weekend yet?
Arabela
