DiorCapture Totale HYALUSHOT
How it was made
The brief put the product against surgery, as the thing you do instead of it. The tube is chrome, so the idea was to let it read like a surgical instrument rather than a cosmetic, set against the needles a customer is hoping to avoid. Grey through to white, nothing warm in it. It also works in eight minutes, so time's in the brief as well as the look.
Lighting a mirror
A mirror is a difficult thing to light because it hasn't got a surface of its own. Every facet shows you something else in the room, so the work is making sure each one is seeing the right thing: a highlight, a gradation, or nothing at all. It comes down to arranging blacks and whites where the tube can see them, and using that contrast to describe the form.
That's why the set is barely larger than the tube and the flags close right in around it. The key is one hard source through a circular mask with the camera on its axis, and the lighting cart at the edge holds a crate of small fluorescents, a sheet of glass stood on end, and bubble wrap.
Before the camera
The framing was worked out the day before in marker: eight boxes on a sheet of paper, the hero shadow, and the ninety degree roll the film would need. It's the only drawing that survives from any job on this site, and it's what the four days were built against.
On the day
Stills and a film out of one campaign, shot as one build over four days in one studio. Shot as two jobs they become two looks. Same set standing, same light on it all week, photographer on one call sheet and director on the other.
Extra plates of the product go off with it, so the applicator and the label can be brought up in post without the picture being taken apart to do it. Motion control goes on for the last two days and travels over and past the tube, repeating the move take after take.
