Posts Tagged ‘CHS Regime’

There is something about the coming of fall (AT LAST for we Angelinos), the biting chill in the air, which gets our juices going just thinking about Halloween coming up! Why, oh, why must we be limited to just one day of playing dress-up, I ask! It seems such a shame to limit our want (*hee hee* need) to play with different looks and styles and images to one all-too-brief 24 hour period.

So, I officially declare October in full as honorary Halloween dress-up month. If that’s not quite enough, perhaps we’ll just have to expand out to the rest of the year. Damnit, we all have lots of dressing up to do … so why the hell not!

We have, for some time, really wanted to do a photo feature using Lip Service to capture an intriguing subject. Mind you, we just love us some dress-up, so any excuse to wrap models in some killer gear, we’re probably going to be all over it.

Yes, the urge for a costume-oriented photo shoot was too much to bear. But we didn’t want to do the obvious … that’s just not our style. Then, in our web travels, we came across this iconic photo of Charlotte Rampling and some other images from The Night Porter. Obsession set in.

Some films just stay with you, for good or ill. If you’ve not seen it, The Night Porter is one of those films. To say the theme is dark, the story disturbing, is a massive understatement. Yet, there is a tragic beauty, especially to Charlotte Rampling’s portrayal of Lucia, the former concentration camp survivor suddenly reunited with her former Nazi SS tormenter & sometimes protector. Every now and again, when one deals in vice and the imagery of it, a bit of dark peeks through … urging you to attempt to capture a similarly stark brand of beauty and tragic obsession.

So, my lovely degenerates, that’s what we set out to do.

Then we remembered the new Lip Service Step In Time men’s military pants and suspenders … Hmmm … that would be crazily close to the original image. Add a Cold War era cap we found at our local military surplus augmented with the military shield from the Das Bunker group and the newly-back matte vegi-leather full-length gloves from the Patent Vinyl group, WOW! To dress out our officer, we decided to start out a bit off the original with the Das Bunker men’s shirt … mainly because it’s just too fabulous of a piece of clothing not to use.

We enlisted my fellow Blacklister Forest Nui Cobalt, our resident Lip Service astrologer and über-hot dancer, and her real-life partner in sexy, Pierre Ordinaire, to embody the characters. I must say, we couldn’t have chosen better! Forest has the same delicate beauty as Charlotte Rampling and, Pierre, while not exactly resembling dark brunette Dirk Bogarde, made a gorgeous exemplar of Teutonic handsomeness.

Here are some of the photos from the first set:

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Then, once we got rolling, the riffing which tends to happen when you put together crazy, creative lunatic kind of people kicked in. Pierre happened to have some groovy goggles, so we jumped out to the fire escape of our funkily old building (aiming the studio lights out the windows … gotta love having a MacGyver of a husband as your lighting guy … thanks Jimi!). These shots took on a bit more of a fantastic steampunk feel, so we just kind of went with it and let the images fall where they may, while trying to keep the original mood. Pierre had also found some rare pieces at the military supply, including an old medal and an SS officer’s coat. We couldn’t help bringing those in (some with some vintage Lippy vinyl and others with the Step In Time pants) and even getting a bit … gasp … naughtily fetish.

One disclaimer I feel I should mention: Having Mentioned the SS coat Pierre found at his military store … Ordinarily, I would never (and I mean NEVER) incoporate anything even suggesting Nazi era imagery into any work I do. However, being as this set is an homage to a film which depicts the story of a Nazi SS officer and his prisoner, we all felt it was not inappropriate to include the coat in the photos. If the image is disturbing to anyone, I sincerely apoligize. No offense is intended.

Also, please don’t fret for the lovely Forest. We have gallons of Zesty Mint stage blood on hand so no actual pokey-pokey with pins and NO ASTROLOGERS WERE HARMED IN THE SHOOTING OF THIS PHOTO SET!

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Photo credits:
Models: Forest Nui Cobalt, Pierre Ordinaire
Photography/Post/Make-up: Mich Masoch – CHS Regime
Special thanks for wardrobe: Lip Service
Lighting (and overall good-sportedness): Jimi King – CHS Regime

Do you have a particular character, movie, or maybe graphic novel you’ve brought to life with Lip Service gear? We’d love to see it! Send your photo goodies to the editor or submit through the webzine.

Happy spooky, Lippy Halloween to all you fabulously naughty Fashion Freaks! I’ll be back with the usual brand of silly sinfulness next month … straight from the World Air Sex Championships as they make their way here to Los Angeles!

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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