The full Monty shoot explained

After having a frantic last week and the week before, i can finally get down to work again. It just feels like Ive been run off my feet for the past 2 weeks with finding out i won the calendar competition ringing about trying to find the ice cream man(who was within one of my images entered into the calendar competition). Visiting areas i thought he may have been in. Photographing the full Monty then preparing to visit the lakes the next day to photograph waterfalls with friends on my course hoping i may get some more images to put towards my exhibition. Rushing to get the images (full Monty images) edited for the crew of the full Monty on the Friday night and saturday morning(they were leaving saturday). Visiting hartlepool within my weekend to get the model release form signed, so its been a bit chaotic recently to say the least.
Soooooo explanation as to why there's been no work done on my blog in the past two weeks over now onto the full Monty.
So i turned up to the civic theatre on the time arranged at 6.15 straight after uni, and was allowed into the civic theatre this time to wait. Again peter tate was not due to be working the time i was meant to be visiting, but i got told "jeff" had give me the go ahead. So i was met by different man who wasn't jeff! who i found rather intrusive and rude to be honest. I think he saw me coming a mile of he saw me as a student and thought i was easy to push about and tell what to do. I understand that in a civic theatre behind the scenes you have to be on the ball because there are people running in and out of the sides with props and you have to know where to stand when to move and get out of the way and i did that. But he got to the point where because he had done photography he was telling me about problems i would experience, which yes i found useful(and didn't experience any of the problems he mentioned like lens flair)but then he went on to tell me what images i should be taking and compositions. He was very much go there, come here take and picture of this and that, and to be honest I'm my own person a like to do my own work and have a wander and see what i can find providing it doesn't pass the boundrylines which they set for me, which to be honest he really got up my nose from the word go.

I went to the full Monty not knowing what to expect,as seen earlier in my blog i did research and I found that the full Monty was based in "New York" but whether they had dramatic makeup and costumes i didn't have the slightest clue,so i went slightly preserved about going and not knowing what to expect. After escaping from that annoying member of the crew who did organising, he let me go along the routes of what i wanted to do and let me wander off into the actors dressing rooms and photographing them with there permission(after an explanation that a photographer I.E me was meant to be coming around photographing). And i found the actors really warm and friendly and helpful, and there was many actors within the show so i had a wide range in choice. The makeup was dramatic just like i wanted and the costumes were great just like what i wanted in kezz but didn't get.

To be honest i found that i got a much better result from the full Monty than i did kezz,and it was the show i was most least looking forward to shooting surprisingly.So after getting some great shoots in the dressing rooms. I was then allowed to shoot at the sidelines of the theatre whilst the show was going on providing i didn't go to far on stage and didn't use my flash. I got some really great outcomes from doing this. After about 9.00 it was getting a bit tiring with the man bossing me around,but i finally got to meet jeff who turned out to be an old man who was in about 2 of the scenes from the show.By 9.00 i thought i had plenty of work to use and was thinking of heading off because I'd been and uni all day then went to the civic theatre as soon as i got home and wanted so tea. But the annoying man wanted me to wait another hour so i could take a picture of the sideline crew, so i reluctantly did. so yes that was my long story, but throughout my complaining i did get lots of work to use and thinking back i regret not taking one image.

When walking through the actors rooms i came across this old lady who looked in her late 80's, after over hearing her conversation i found that she was a makeup artist in the civic theatre when she was younger,and she was also part of the shows sometimes.she was dramatic with a turban on, although she had white hair she still painted her eyebrows brown and remembered to put her eyeliner on.he sat there in her little knitted jumper with a medal attached to her jumper and looking across the room, she had her old and i mean old makeup laid out (in old Victorian tins they were almost like face paints) with her old programs from shows she had been in and the photo's from them.

Now at the time i picked up the courage to say please could i take a picture of you and she said yes for me the first shot was perfect and i think expressed the person she was.The picture to be honest gets me a little stewed every time i see.And because i liked the first shot i took i listened to her story looked at her programs said thank you then left.Looking back i really wish i had taken time o take and image of her old makeup laid out with her programs and i could of linked the 2 images within my final prints but i didn't sooo i know for next time.

From the shoot with the full Monty after taking the image the annoying man asked me to burn the images onto DVD for them and he would edit my work and he said he would use it in the brochures.I thought nothing of it at the time thinking great my work will be used within a brochure and advertising,but when i got home i started to stew over what he said. I was really not happy with him editing my work,and basically claiming glory for my work and doing what ever with them as he wanted. I spoke to Richard and he said ask john he had the same problem. So i did so in the end i decided on burning the majority of the images with my copyright info in the metadad with my watermark throughout the centre of the image very slight so it couldnt be taken out. After doing that i burnt 40 images on the DVD and it took me 4 hours to do all of them. But looking back I'm glad i did it because it means my work is safe and the "annoying man cant claim my work as him own". :)