Creating the Princess Warrior — Part 6 — Making the Set
The day of the shoot arrived. My car — a station wagon — was packed to the gunnels with props. The costumes, the swords, shields, gauntlets, helmets, jewelry, plush throw for the throne, cloak for the King, feather rock for the Sword of Destiny, three large garbage bags filled with autumn leaves …And, stuffed into the front seat, Katee, who I had picked up on the way over.
I was lucky enough to get parked really close to the front doors of the building housing the studio.
It took us two trips upstairs to get all the stuff up to the studio.
Sadly, Eva Mocek was too ill to attend, so in addition to being the artist Director, I was now also the Costume person. Fortunately, Peter House Domanski kept clothing racks on wheels for his fashion product shoots, so we were able to get all the outfits neatly hung up in out of the way in the hall.
Bruce, lugging all the lighting stands and photo equipment, was already there getting set up. Judi had her makeup cases out and set up in the makeup room.
Katee and I got the rock and the sword set up,
and began to empty out the bags of leaves.
We needed to create an area that was large enough for three or four people to stand, but not so large as to interfere with the photographer and the lights.
The rest of the crew started to trickle in. Judi dragged Katee off to begin her Princess makeup. I produced the long, fake braids and Judi and I tried to figure out the best way to attach them securely to Katee’s hair. This proved to be daunting — Katee has thick, heavy hair and it did not want to stay put. Eventually we battled the hair into an upswept pony tail and attached the braids with a series of clips and combs.
Meantime, Peter had come out of his office to see how we were doing. He stood with a mesmerized look on his face when he saw the large pile of dried up leaves on the studio floor.
Julie got the times mixed up and arrived an hour late. She immediately began to draw the background pictures on the chalkboard, and not a moment too soon. I was having panic attacks.
Now the dry leaves had to be pushed around until they formed a uniform layer, and various pieces of fake foliage had to be suspended from the rod Bruce had set up between stands for this purpose.
The “cast” were milling around near the kitchen counter and watching this process with interest.
From their standpoint, it looked like a big messy pile of leaves, a strange looking rock with a sword stuck in, and a bunch of fake greenery suspended from a rod. How would this turn into a believable backdrop for the shoot? This was the question in everybody’s mind. Bruce just smiled and said “You’ll see!”
Katee’s Princess makeup was finally done and we got her into the Eva Mocek Princess dress.
Julie was putting the finishing touches to her castle, tree and armed men scene.
Judi transformed Jessica Tree into Astilii, with clever makeup and we got her into the bodyguard outfit.
We were ready to roll.
