Ahead of the game
In the movie-mad city LA, expat photographer Brett Stanley looks at making headshots that stand apart from the crowd
Living in Wellington (or Wellywood!) for 10 years I thought I’d been exposed to a fair amount of the film industry, but moving to Los Angeles two years ago gave me a whole new perspective. A city of 10 million people that produces almost 50 per cent of the TV and film in the country? That’s a lot of actors, directors, and crew.
Step in to any of the city’s 100-plus Starbucks coffee shops and you’ll see a handful of hopeful actors or screenwriters dutifully working on their scripts, or emailing headshots to agents. I once walked into a café on Sunset, stopped, and left again thinking it was a Mac store, so many apple logos were staring back at me.
But with this bustling industry come all the side vendors: caterers, acting instructors, and of course the ubiquitous headshot photographer. Their main job is to make an actor look as much like themselves as possible, so they get hired, whilst tricking the actor into thinking they look like someone else. They didn’t become an actor to be themselves now, did they? It’s a tricky predicament, and not one I’m much drawn to.
My preferred style of shooting is more rooted in fantasy. Unless it’s photojournalism, I’d much rather have the freedom to be creative and produce something that tells a story. Which is why I was chuffed when actor Brian Glanney approached me to shoot his new headshots, but with a twist.
Brian has been in the industry for many years, and the thought of having to shoot a new set of headshots was not very appealing. Don’t get me wrong, headshots are a must for any actor, even the A-listers. But in addition to these Brian wanted to do something bigger, more produced, more cinematic. He had me at “Hello”.
We started to come up with a series of situations, or scenes, for the photographs. We wanted to have three to four different looks, so we created some different characters for him, different locations, different styles.
Now, if you’ve never been to LA it’s exactly like you see in the movies. I mean exactly. Walking down the street you could be forgiven for thinking you’re on a film set. It’s been shot in movies so many times that we have these places ingrained in our minds. You look at a building and think Transformers, see a diner and you’re thinking PulpFiction.
So we were spoilt for choice when it came to shooting locations.
Along with our makeup artist, Kerrin Jackson, we started shooting in an old renovated building in downtown. We had access to the roof, for some great images with the LA skyline, down to the basement, where they had a pool table set up just perfect for our tough-guy bar scene, and out into the alleyway for a bit of New York winter (which was fairly difficult in an LA summer).
We also headed to one of my most favorite spots in all of Los Angeles, under the 6th Street bridge. This is where the LA river dribbles its way down to Long Beach and out into the sea. It’s also where some iconic movies were filmed, including the race scene in Grease, Arnie on a motorbike in Terminator2, and even TheDark KnightRises. It’s an incredible place, with the Art Deco bridges spanning the concrete culvert one after the other into the distance, and the shallow water flowing past in a constant stream of rubbish and shopping carts. Beautiful.
After driving down through an unnervingly dark tunnel we arrived on the bed of the river and set up for the shoot. I wanted Brian to be running through the water in a suit, clutching his briefcase, in an Hitchcock-inspired chase scene. It was a photo we only had a few chances to get before he was drenched, but Brian did great and we got the shots we needed.
He only fell in the water once, due to the thick algae on the riverbed, but he recovered and we kept on shooting. I didn’t have the heart to tell him about the article I’d read the day before about the number of diseases in the LA River, but I told him to go straight home and shower. I haven’t heard from him for a while, now that I think of it …