The Horror

Wednesday October 19th, 2011

With Halloween just around the corner, I thought it’d be fun to highlight a spooky, scary shoot! So, when I saw one of Michael Clinard‘s most recent ad campaigns, I knew it was the one to share. Here’s the story…

Last June, while on his way to Texas in an RV with a band of photographers headed to Phoot Camp, Michael got an email from Seattle’s Experience Music Project‘s Melissa Robinson—a designer he’d worked with in the past. The email explained that EMP was planning an exciting upcoming exhibit entitled Can’t Look Away: The Lure of Horror Film and were looking for a photographer for their marketing campaign. Melissa wanted to know if Michael would be interested in shooting some “horror scenes” for the project. She ended the email by saying that she’d love to work with Michael again and thought the project could be fun and “super creative” campaign.

Michael was sold, both by the prospect of a unique creative shoot and by Melissa’s enthusiasm. They got started right away,

At our first strategy meeting, Melissa provided me with the color palette above and a list of films that were being included in the exhibition. I then provided my treatment proposal along with some inspiration images that we used as launching points for the final hero images.

Color Palette

As he does with most shoots, Michael then got to work concepting and throwing ideas back and forth with the creatives via doodles, sketches and notes,

I started playing with popular film tropes like The Exorcist, Frankenstein and zombies because those characters live within a very large portion of the general public. Their images are quick reads to most and the payoff is pretty big because characters situate themselves within this economy of emotion and one’s personal history.

Michael's Frankenstein ideas

Michael explains how he thought up and shot his Frankenstein photo,

I oftentimes take seemingly straight forward ideas and turn them on their ear. As in the case of the Frankenstein sketch, we wanted to show the Bride of Frankenstein somehow, but we wanted to do so in a different way than what’s normally expected. Through extensive brainstorming sessions, the idea morphed into the Bride of Frankenstein out on a movie night date with her hubby.

I pulled my longtime post-work and photoshop composite guy, Ian Goode of Gigantic Squid, in on the project to help execute the final treatment to the images. For the lighting techies out there you can peep the diagram to get an idea of what I was rolling with, 13 lights all together:

Frankenstein lighting sketch

Here’s the final product:

The images are being displayed all around Seattle, and Michael says that, “It’s been really cool to see these monsters out in the wild as they’re everywhere in Seattle. It was really a dream assignment.”

Can’t Look Away: The Lure of Horror Film is currently on display, so go check it out! Also, you can view more of Michael’s both spooky and non spooky work on his website, michaelclinard.com.

- Maria Luci