Politics of the Set: Who Owns the Final Yes

Every shoot day runs on a chain of command whether anybody wrote one down or not, and when the brand has settled who owns the final yes before the van is loaded, the day runs, but when they have not you end up with six intelligent people holding opinions about one garment while the clock keeps charging all of them.

That is the politics of the set.

It is also the largest hidden cost in apparel photography, and what is it? Not the studio and not the rate, its the half hour lost four separate times because nobody in the room was allowed to say yes.

Two director’s chairs, a tethered monitor between us, the brand stylist on my left. We are both looking at the same frame in the same second, which is the cheapest decision-making structure anybody ever invented.

So why is everybody sitting down? Because sitting is procedure rather than laziness, and when the person holding approval is watching the same tethered frame I am watching, the yes takes four seconds and the day moves, whereas the moment she drifts across the room to look at the model instead of the photograph she has started approving something the customer will never see, and we will discover at retouch that the sleeve was reading wrong the whole afternoon.

Put whoever can say yes in a chair beside the monitor. That single arrangement will save a brand more money than any negotiation over the day rate ever has.

How that photograph came to be

The room is a white cyc inside an industrial building and it is not remotely glamorous, there is a California Republic flag hanging on the wall to the left, an orange floor fan roughly the size of a car wheel, skylights, bare bulbs and a concrete floor with a crack running through it.

Two black parabolic umbrellas, one either side, both feathered so the light wraps the model rather than hitting her, and the fan switched off despite the heat because a floor fan and a tulle skirt have never once negotiated successfully. My leather jacket is over the back of the chair for the same reason.

The reason I dropped to a seated height for that look was the skirt itself, since standing up shortens it and kills the shape the tulle is doing, whereas sitting puts the hem where it belongs, and it took exactly one test frame to find that before the whole look went quickly, which mattered a great deal because there was a full rail of them waiting their turn.

Test frames on a white cyc for garment colour accuracy — Test frames before anybody commits. Grey wool on a white cyc is a trap, the meter wants to lift it and the customer opens a box containing something two shades darker than the picture promised.

Crew lining up camera and lighting on a model — Lining up, one white parabolic and one silver, and me down on the floor on a cushion shooting upward because a low angle buys length in a garment without anybody having to move a single stand.

Behind the scene

Here is the photograph brands should genuinely study, and it was not taken on the set at all.

Crowded hair and makeup room with model waiting in a chair — The prep room. Count the people in it, one model in the chair on her phone, a hair stylist braiding from behind, a second hair and makeup person with brushes shoved through his belt, somebody working the rail, two more talking by the door and another sitting down at the back.

Seven people, one model. She is wrapped in a cable knit sweater and leggings scrolling her phone while her hair gets braided, and every last person in that room is being paid for that minute, which is not a criticism of a single one of them, that is simply what a shoot day looks like and it’s the correct number of bodies for the work.

But do you see where a budget actually goes? It is nowhere near where most brands assume it goes.

So what is the real answer sitting inside that photograph? The rail behind her chair. Every look steamed and tagged and hanging in order before the day begins is a look that gets photographed, while every look that turns up in a suitcase and has to be found and pressed and puzzled over is fifteen minutes with seven people standing inside it…do that four times across a morning and you have spent an hour of everybody, which is most of what a small brand imagines it is saving by skipping a stylist.

Makeup touch up while an assistant positions a softbox on a stand — Touch up between looks, the model sitting on a wooden crate in green with a fur collar while the makeup artist works, and on the left an assistant already has the softbox up and positioned for the setup that has not started yet.

That frame is the entire argument compressed into one image, because nobody in it is waiting for anybody else, the makeup is happening and the light for the next look is being built during the same minute rather than after it. Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? Almost nobody does it, because doing it requires one person on the day whose whole job is thinking a setup ahead of everybody, and that person is the very first line a cheap quote deletes.

Small industrial studio, white vinyl on the floor, two umbrellas — A deliberately cheap room, corrugated walls and a green tube light nobody bothered switching off, white vinyl rolled straight onto the concrete, two umbrellas and shoes laid out on a cloth. The delivered frames give away none of it!

So before anybody argues about the rate, settle three things in writing.

1- Who is on the day, and which one of them can approve a frame without telephoning somebody else.

2- What order the looks get shot in, decided the night before rather than at eleven the next morning.

3- Who is carrying responsibility for the rail turning up pressed and already in that order.

Which of the three matters most? All of them equally, and get those three right and a merely competent photographer will hand you a good day, get them wrong and the finest photographer in this city will hand you an invoice for standing around in a nice room.

Everybody wants to talk about the camera. Nobody ever wants to talk about the rail.