The Making of a Zombie Pin-up!
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 by Mich Masoch
Okay, I will have to plead guilty to being an unabashed fan of the darkly tinged art our resident gore whore, Nos, and her photographic collaborator, Wicked Illusions create with staggering frequence. So much so that, when given the chance to play in their sandbox, both I and the WebMaster jumped in with both feet. Our friend, writer R.H. Stavis, checked out the gory goodness on My Zombie Pin-Up and wanted to submit some photos for their calendar contest.
side note: Make sure to vote for Rachel’s submissions at My Zombie Pin-up and help get a fellow Lippy Addict into their next calendar!
Of course, that meant we only had a week to prepare. And we’ve never shot anything even close to this complicated. And we don’t exactly have a mess of cash burning a hole in our pockets.
Yet, we said, “Fuck it! Let’s do this thing!”
Arts n Crafts! See full size in gallery below
Undaunted and filled with giddy anticipation, we forged ahead with the killer cool concept Rachel brought to the table. She wanted to bring to life a character from a short story who awakens from plastic surgery to find she now has a killer rack in the wrong sort of way. This is the story of how to pull off a zombie pin-up photo shoot with no time and virtually no budget.
The first step, after deciding on a concept, was to determine how in the hell we were going to pull it off without resorting to heroic levels of photoshopping. Now, it seemed, all those lame grade-school art projects would not have been in vain. Rather than try to build out something the day of the shoot with liquid latex, I dragged out an old LA Weekly and a flour/water mixture to go with paper mache. This was not only great for saving prep time, but would give us a prop which could be used again if needed for a reshoot.
So, step one: Get some flexible wire and build out frames to use as the base of the paper mache piece.
clever drying rig - See full size in gallery below
Of course, all those old craft projects being WAY in my past, I kind of forgot how fucking insanely long paper mache takes to dry. Even after an initial blast with the blow dryer and sitting in an airy space all night, our critical FX pieces were downright gunky and awful. SHIT!
Helpful Tip: If you have FX pieces with extended drying times, try to make them as far ahead of the shooting day as possible (unlike big dumb-ass me).
Fortunately, the WebMaster is as clever as he is yummy. Using a couple of spare fans, he created a drying rig that had our paper mache completely set up and ready for painting in just a few hours.
Step two: Apply paint/latex/etc to FX props.
The paper mache concept appeared really late in the game, much later than the WebMaster’s trip to the lovely Hollywood Blvd costume/make-up store. So, we improvised. I had a mess of light and white colors of nail polish for French manicure, so used that to cover the newsprint and provide a deathly pallor for our killer rack.
WebMaster makes lighting SEXY - See full size in gallery below
Fabulously gothy black polish gave us a nice gaping mouth, and several reds provided the blood-covered lips.
Now it was actually time to start the real shooting prep.
Step three: Get your lighting set up.
Once again, the WebMaster was there with some MacGyver quality resourcefulness. Using a large job site light rig we got years ago from that home center place, we had the overall brightness we needed in the room, but not the effect we wanted. So, my clever husband pulled the stand out from under his keyboard, set it on its side, and used it as a base for clip-on spot lights.
Step four: Prep your model
Gaping Zombie Mouth Boob - See full size in gallery below
We had it pretty easy, really, to get Rachel ready for her zombie pin-up photos. Outside of makeup and hair, which called for nothing too extensive (just pin-up with a touch of gothy goodness), we just needed to get the killer zombie boobs in place. With some strategic tearing of her shift and a bit of spirit gum adhesive, we were in business. All that remained was adding some blood … lots and lots of blood (and, added bonus, zesty mint blood … Mmmmm!).
Helpful Tip: If you are using a spatula, spoon or (in our case) chopstick to fling blood in a spatter pattern, do it on a covered or non-porous surface and away from anything you don’t want to permanently look like it came from a crime scene.
Fake/stage blood is awsome shit but it does have its funky drawbacks. It is sticky as hell and will quite possibly stain porous things. It will also tend to get everywhere if you’re not careful. We didn’t put down cover on the floor and are still finding little bitty bits of sticky on the wood floor quite apart from where I was flinging it.
Zesty Mint Blood! See full size in gallery below
Step five: Shoot some kick-ass photos!
One thing we’ve learned in our dabblings into photo and video shoots, the best time to think about the shot you want is NOT when the model is ready and waiting.
Helpful tip: Know what you want and make a plan on executing your shoot ahead of time.
The model will most likely also have some great ideas, but always know the shots/poses you want before you start shooting. If you’ve not done a particular style before (as we hadn’t done a pin-up of any style), look around and see what body positions, facial expressions, and angles you think will work for your model and shoot. If need be, be ready to show that to them, too.
Okay, that’s the extent of the shooting. But if you’re like us, you’re certainly not done yet!
Step six: The post!
There will generally always be some little tweaks and retouching to a photo, whether it be tinkering with lighting effects, adjusting the levels, blowing out or blowing up the color, you name it. But, with a zombie pin-up, that’s just the beginning of all the wonderful things you can do to enhance your shot.
In this case, I really wanted to keep Rachel’s natural beauty intact, so didn’t play with filtering and the like. Instead, I used my photoshop time to add some nasty teeth and a darting togue to make the killer zombie boobs look truly lethal. Then I added a soft lighting effect to create the look of a floodlight spotting our zombie heroine.
Well, that’s it, really. Our very first zombie pin-up shoot. With a little creative MacGyver-ing, it’s really not as daunting as it seems to get something pretty solidly cool. We won’t be meeting the level of Nos and Wicked Illusions, but we had so much fun it really didn’t matter in the end. We have a cool set of photos and Rachel will have some deadly submissions for the My Zombie Pin-up contest.
To put an end to the FULL story, we were so jazzed after our zombie pin-up shoot, we set up a gore shoot (starring ME) immediately afterward. Perhaps I’ll share those with you another time.
Until the next time …
R. H. Stavis: Zombie Pin-up - click for full size
the photo after effects - click for full size
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