That's a wrap... for now!

As of last Friday we have completed principal photography for our documentary! Having shot the bulk of the 'drag' segment of our doc, which was the interactive/performative part of the piece, we only needed to shoot the interview with our subject and we were good to go, provided reshoots weren't necessary (After looking at the footage from last Tuesday I'm happy that we have all that we need)

Now comes the edit. Since both shoots we've been throwing around some ideas for editing techniques and music. During the interview Glenn (our subject) mentions a couple of celebrities or figures in the media who are associated with the things he discusses. A few pe
ople of note are Eddie Izzard, the extremely cross-dressing comedian, known for performing his comedy sketches in drag but not being gay himself. Another is Rob Halford, the lead singer of the British heavy metal band 'Judas Priest', an openly gay man who one might not normally associate with the heavy metal scene.

One of the main points that we discussed and that we'd love to focus on in the edit is the idea of how the media portrays sexuality stereotypes, e.g. a gay man would be portrayed as very flamboyant and camp and a gay woman will be portrayed as very masculine and butch. Despite this preconceptions by the media, in our society we have very masculine gay men (Rob Halford) and very feminine gay women (e.g. Portia De Rossi, wife of openly lesbian TV presenter Ellen Degeneres).

Photos from set

Just a few touch-ups before the camera rolls.

The team + our sublime subject.

Last-minute wind machine!

The set coming together, featuring the first of many additions

The makeup table, a labour of love.

Big updates coming soon!

The past few days have been crazy, with the big shoot on Tuesday and all other work involved with college, so it's annoying that I haven't put aside the time to dedicate to my blog! This is just a quick post before the shoot today, where we'll get mainly interview footage.

Over the past couple of weeks we've been watching documentaries, both famous and lesser-know, to help gain an appreciation for the genre, but also to give us ideas and techniques to implement and emulate in our own pieces. One documentary we watched yesterday in class was 'We Are Not Afraid' (dir. Declan Keeney), a hard-hitting artistic look at the lives of those affected by the Siege of Sarajevo that took place from 1992 to 1996. Keeney's use of colour struck me the most about the film, with scenes splashed in red just as a subject discusses her dislike of the colour, and colder tones of white and blue.

During the shoot on Tuesday I made an on-the-spot decision to incorporate red gels in my studio lighting set up, something that went down quite well with both my colleagues and our peers who happened to come into the studio. Watching back the footage, the set is often bathed in a deep red or a warm pink, both feminine colours to a degree, which gave the look of the footage like a barbie house dressing room, albeit with a drag queen!

More inspiration

I mentioned the show RuPaul's Drag Race in an earlier post, but I didn't quite stress how OBSESSED I am with this show. My life feels like a countdown until the next series or episode and I wouldn't have it any other way. If you're familiar with America's Next Top Model, then the format for Drag Race will be very familiar to you, albeit with Drag Queens rather than female models.

A good chunk of an episode will feature Queens getting ready in their makeup and costume, something which we'd always talked about filming for our piece, and afterwards we see them strutting their stuff on the runway to be judged.

This idea of transformation brings me back to the theme of hands. Even the most feminine and gorgeous Queen cannot escape the masculine trait of big hands, and one of the Queens I'm following the most right now, Courtney Act, posted a picture that sums this up very well.

"The problem with drag selfies is the clutching man hand in the foreground."

One thing I can draw from this is the idea that no matter how much we change or transform, there will always be an aspect of who we were beforehand, be in minuscule or large. 

First day of shooting begins.... tomorrow!

This blog's been painfully silent the last couple of weeks because, well... a couple of snags have been hit in the process!

Our initial plan of filming Drag Wars didn't work out due to money and time constraints so we were in a production limbo of sorts while we tried to find an alternative subject, but no more!

We may not have a real drag queen (yet, i'm holding out on a few names!) but we've got a couple of people who are willing to get dolled up for us and strut about, while we film of course. It's not 100% what I had in mind, but it's something (and we really need something) and it's pretty exciting!

We'll be using the studio tomorrow morning to shoot this segment, expect a post detailing our exploits!