Ritz & Wonder.
For the past several years, my good friend Jay Wilkinson has helped put together elaborate New Year's Eve parties in collaboration with Holland Collective. This past New Year's he asked me to help with some photos & video to promote a 1920's circus themed party called Ritz & Wonder.
We shot it in the giant empty warehouse that the party was to take place. I rented an M-18 to fill the place with light, an Arri kit for accent lights, and a heavy duty fog machine. We filled the place with fog that each performer could emerge from, backlight the hell out of it, and got a ton of fun dolly shots moving in & out.
The performers in the video were all folks who were actually going to be performing at the party. The MC for the evening would be the magician Ash Adams. He was super fun to work with because he had a literal bag of tricks for us to choose from. He's also a big fan of old school magicians, so he had no problem playing up his showmanship. His was the most fun to direct because we could just keep getting more and more over the top with the shots. For instance adding a ridiculous amount of gunpowder to the fire tricks, or having people throw extra handfuls of cards from off screen.
The juggler was Josh Ellis, the dapper gentleman juggler, who had just moved here from Shreveport. He had a suitcase full of props, and was great at throwing out ideas and taking direction. He was a total champ because not only was he juggling, but he'd have to keep eye contact with the lens while doing so, and hit perfectly timed cues. His was the most fun to edit, because the rhythm of the juggling made the speed ramps more noticeable and exciting.
The actual burlesque dancer / aerialist that we were supposed to shoot with got food poisoning on the day of the shoot. So a mild panic ensued when trying to figure out what we would do instead. But lucky for us Coco Lectric, who is kind of a big deal in the Texas burlesque community, was still in town from a show the night before, and down for filming. She showed up halfway through the shoot, did her makeup, and was ready for filming just in time. She was perhaps the easiest to film, because we just let her do her thing and kept the camera rolling. Everything looked beautiful.
