The most dangerous way to eat toast...
Photo by: Rick Craft *Ding!*
Where to begin...
Well, let's start with an idea. I've had this shoot idea in mind for quite some time. This was going to be a shoot with a live, real model and an electrified toaster! Minus the electricity. I have been actively searching for the perfect location for this for at least 6 months. It's a pretty specific look, and colorful bathrooms with victorian tubs aren't a cheap or common location to be had in LA. An idea pushed to the back of my mind, waiting to be re-inspired by the off chance of stumbling upon this imaginary bathroom, would soon fade away into the abyss of "ideas that have lost the spark". This is dangerous territory for artists and we all know it well. Ideas that seem great in a moment, but we later talk ourselves out of it because of the difficulty or extensive pre-production necessary to bring it to life.
This is where we have to think outside of the box, or inside the box in this situation...
In general, I feel that if I can't find the certain thing I am looking for, I will make it. If I make it poorly, at least it will serve function until I can make a better one :) In most cases, if not all, I have been more content with self-made creations than anything I can buy at a store. Going back to my childhood, I had wrestling action figures. These wrestlers would battle it out on various counter-tops and carpeted floors, but it wouldn't be long before they demanded a ring (no, not like your girlfriend). Determined to end the strike, I constructed a wrestling ring from a pizza box, 4 popsicle sticks and yarn. It was amazing. Amazingly terrible.
omit picture due to lack of camera in 1996
The ring quickly broke down after a few pile-drivers and botched stage entrances. Time to rebuild. The next version of the ring was a beast, solid wood construction (thanks to my dad) with dowel rod posts and industrial strength rubber bands for the ropes (thanks to my mom's legal office supply). This new and improved ring was the entertainment center of attention for a few months (or 6 years in kid time). For christmas that year, I asked for the flashy cage match edition of the ring found at Toys R Us. Santa delivered, and I was ecstatic! For a moment... Not that I wasn't grateful, I was, but I found myself returning to the wooden version that we had built. Even though the scale was a little off, and it wasn't officially licensed, something about it was more satisfying even as a kid.
/end childhood diversion.
Bringing it back to the shoot you have already forgotten about, I mentioned this because it took going back to that childhood-like state of invention to materialize this project. I was in Virginia visiting family, and I didn't bring any of my gear or talented model friends, so shooting wasn't really an option. Until I made it one. I lightly brought the idea up to my sister (who had always been my partner in crime with these crazy building projects), and she laughed. Since we are in our 20's now, this wasn't far off from the reaction that I expected, but it didn't end with a "No". She said "you're twisted" which translated to me as "absolutely! Go out and buy the materials and let's do this thing!". I went out and purchased the following:
-1 project panel of cherry plywood from home depot $9
-2 smaller sticks of square wood (for trim) $5
-2 Martha Stewart sized sample paint mixes $5
-2 Barbie sets containing furniture and key pieces $40
(this was the most expensive part, but only bc it
was so specific. So I don't entirely count this)
-1 Snickers bar $1.29
For less than $65, I was ready to help this barbie opt out! I set out all of the building supplies and explained the scene and setup to the best of my ability. After confusing everyone, I decided to just start building the room, I knew the rest would catch on when visualization was a factor. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the raw wood or process up until this photo :(
To get our room to this point:
- I cut the walls to size, matching our floor space.
- Jessica and I measured out the squares for the checkered floor, painted the entire board white, and
then colored the black checker squares with a sharpie.
- Martha Stewart would be proud of her sample sized paints, even though the colors were chosen
from another color crafting genius known as Sherwin Williams (sorry Martha). The walls were
painted, taped off and two-toned.
- Window was cut out with a jig-saw, the "glass" was plastic that was cut off of the barbie packaging.
(thanks dad!)
- The square sticks were painted white and cut to size for our chair railing.
- Furniture was moved in to start spacing out our room.
Jessica finishes off some milk, and creates the curtains from paper towels she had colored with a pink marker. (Thanks for the idea mom!)
Again, I skipped a bunch of process photo opportunities. But I can explain!
- The chair railing has been completed on all 3 walls
- Bath tub, toaster and toilet have been painted to fit the scene a little better
- I used some leftover plywood to make the armoire in the left corner. Again, cut out with a jig saw
and painted to match. My sister glued ball screws from old jewelry she had to the doors to work
as little door handles!
- A rug set was created from an old ski mask we found in our winter coat closet
- The flowers in the background were also made by my sister, they were taken from some existing
faux foliage found in our house.
- Q-tip towel rack (self explanatory)
- Toaster gets some juice! The power cable was made from old headphones most likely acquired on a
domestic flight. Judging by the cheap quality, probably Delta.
Prepping for lights! I have never done this, but due to lack of proper lighting and diffusion options, I had to get creative. I added a layer of wax paper to the top of our set for light diffusion. The background of this photo contains a (dual) VHS version of Titanic, Kate Winslet definitely helped out during this part of the process.
Titanic remains in the photo, but this time around it has less to do with the clouds than one would think. We needed a sky background to view through our dollhouse window. We approached this a few different ways before settling on a now obvious solution. Jessica sketched out and water colored a few variations of clouds on drawing paper. This looked great though the window, but the lighting didn't quite match up. We played around with lighting the drawing, but that left us without enough light for our set. Again, we are working with what we happened to have available. I was looking up photos of clouds on my sisters laptop when it clicked... Just set the laptop behind the window!
Final behind the scenes photo! We used 3 home depot silver dish light fixtures that my sister had leftover from old snake tank setups (yes, she is a crazy snake lady). I started with the overhead, somewhat of a hair light/back light first. Then we positioned the "Sun" light outside of the window, its only effect is the sunny side key coming through the window. Lastly we added the frontal fill light, which still came from overhead, but it added the room ambience we needed. We used my sisters Canon t3 camera with a 24-55 kit lens.
Additional items added to the room:
- Compact wall mirror provided by my sister, served as barbie vanity check, although Ken would
hate this urination reminding shame reflection...
- Tiny magazines cut out and created by Jessica, mini-magazine rack made by Shannon (from q-tips)
- Blow dryer is a painted ear-bud, wall mounted by a folded soda pop-tab.
- The mini trash can is a medicine measuring cup with a plastic bag liner, filled with trash from our
shoot, including some of barbies hand soap props (and possibly tampons, gross).
There you have it. A behind the scenes look of the *Ding!* photoshoot, and my childhood. This was an amazing project and I learned a lot from it. Not only did it challenge us to create something from nothing, but to get innovative with the items we had around the house. Creating a mini-world is a great way to kill the excuses for not being able to find locations. Even though my dad was 2 seconds away from disowning me as a son for buying barbies, he eventually came around and everyone got involved :) This was truly a great collaboration and it certainly won't be the last miniature barbie danger set!
Thank you mom, dad, Shannon Craft, Mike Kidd and Jessica Huerta, your creative contributions made this possible!
