This year I've been commissioned to make some new exciting content for a new wine brand called Madame F. The content had to be quirky, fun, eye-catching and true to brand but also with an 'honest' feel.
Madame F is a creative collaboration with Queer Britain, a charity that is working to create the UK’s first national LGBTQ+ museum.
“Queer Britain is a charity working to establish a bricks and mortar national LGBTQ+ museum, for all, regardless of sexuality or gender identity or expression. We believe that queer people’s stories should be understood by all and celebrated in all their rich diversity in their own, dedicated home. “
Between myself and Submerge Digital (the agency) we came up with some fun and challenging ideas, there was a mixture of stills photography, animation and video, the primary use to be on Madame F’s Instagram page. The work has been on-going with regular shooting sessions in my studio.
We used all sorts of photography techniques including high speed flash of 1/10,000 second to stop motion, 11 frames per second shutter, time exposures, multiple exposures, multiple composite images, shifting colour channels, all shot on three different cameras depending on what results we were after. The lighting was a mix of flash, LED, projections and multi-flash exposures.
Combination of a sparkler and time exposure. Took a few goes as quite random where the sparkler sparkles, but we got the image I wanted in the end.
High speed flash at 1/10,000 sec and camera shooting 11 frames per second then made into an animation with Davinci Resolve.
Madame F have three types of wine, a red, white and rosé, the rosé being the best seller so far. To get the wide perspective on this shot I used a Phase One 28mm lens which is the widest lens they have, I think it is equivalent to a 19mm lens on a 35mm camera, so quite wide! The crown was hung from above by some fine fishing line which was retouched out in post production. It was lit by a small Broncolor Picolite, being a small hard light source it made the jewels in the crown sparkle more than if a soft light had been used.
The mp4 above was created using a mixture of real and computer generated background, this had the greatest social media reach of all the images from the first batch of photography.
Here's a little behind the scenes to give you an idea of what we did.
Some more information on Queer Britain:
"Queer Britain became a charity in late 2018 and is now preparing to move into its first physical home. It will be the UK’s first national museum focused on LGBTQ+ people, gathering, exploring and celebrating their stories, histories and artefacts. As well as being full of rich and wildly diverse stories from the past and present, it will have a strong educational agenda.
Queer Britain will be an innovative, immersive bricks and mortar museum which will preserve and present stories and artefacts. It will celebrate, explore and explain LGBTQ+ lives and place them in a national and international context for everyone.
There will be a mixture of permanent and temporary exhibition spaces, educational and workshop spaces. It will be the museum that the LGBTQ+ communities – and the country more broadly – has needed for many years. www.queerbritain.org.uk "
