Animals are fine, never work with jelly

Behind the scenes at House of Hearing’s misheard campaign

Grumpy cats, goat divas and a jelly with something of a diva personality – it’s all in a day’s work for photographer Lee Howell.

They say you should never work with kids or animals, but a local hearing centre believes it is jelly that should be avoided.

House of Hearing’s advertising campaign, #misheardphrases, has proved very successful with its customers, but getting the shots needed was anything but straightforward.

Angela Jackson-Barnes, marketing manager at House of Hearing, explained:

“The campaign is centred on misheard phrases: cat and goat, instead of hat and coat, meat and chicken, instead of meet at check-in, foam a cat, instead of phone a cab. A particular favourite is there’s wasps on the jelly – ‘what’s on the telly?’

“The intention wasn't to necessarily do animal ads, but a lot of the ideas that made us laugh just happened to involve animals”.

Photographer, Lee Howell, said the brief had been a challenge, but one he was happy to rise to.

“When it comes to photography, each new campaign or project always presents new technical challenges and hurdles to overcome,” he said. “More often than not it’s the less complicated shots that prove to be more demanding – and this campaign was no different.

“Our initial worry was how we were going to photograph the animals, especially for the ‘foam a cat’ shot, because, as everyone knows, cats hate getting wet. But it proved to be the jelly shot that took several attempts,” said Lee.

The shot was supposed to be quite straightforward. The plan was to use a series of composited exposures to light all the different aspects of the jelly, and then bring them all together in postproduction for the final image.

“However, having not made jelly in a mould for a good number of years, this proved more challenging than we first thought,” he said, laughing that it took four attempts to make a photogenic jelly.

“Who would have thought making the perfect jelly for photography would have been so troublesome?”

With the jelly shot put to bed, Lee’s team moved on to the foamed cats: the concept with the most potential to go wrong.

“Having once tried to bathe my own cat and seeing the usually cuddly, docile creature fight to get away from the water, we knew this one was going to be the hardest to get right,” said Lee, adding the team had already recruited the services of a long-haired Maine Coon cat breeder who had answered a casting call.

“They were great! There were some funny meow sounds coming from the breeder’s bathroom as they were bathed and a few grumpy cat faces to photograph, which certainly added to the comical value to each shot. The foam was then added in postproduction.

“All in all, it went far better than any of us had imagined.”

That wasn’t the end of the photographer’s fun with furry friends, though, as the team then set up a portable studio on the East Links Petting Farm.

“We thought this would be far less demanding on the animals than getting them into the studio, and they were great to work with,” said Lee.

“We had a stubborn donkey who really didn’t like the blue colour studio background paper so refused to walk on it, and the farmhouse pet chicken kept making a dash for home, which proved quite comical, as we watched the animal handler chasing her around the field next to us.

“But the star of the day was Robbie, the wee black-and-white goat who couldn’t get enough of the limelight. Even at the end of the shoot, while the other goats were shying away from the cameras, Robbie was straight in there: a star in the making.”

So, if you ask Lee and the team at House of Hearing, they would say it’s fine to work with animals. Just think twice before deciding to cast a jelly.

To find out how you can avoid misheard phrases, visit House of Hearing's website www.houseofhearing.co.uk or pop into the Perth branch at 54 South Methven Street.