Making a Photo Shoot Sing

Photo shoot at the end of the day yesterday. The campus chorale is headed to China after graduation and needed some publicity photos. The plan was to shoot outdoors. It’s a large group — 60 people — and I had reserved a bucket truck to give the photographer some height. Things started going wrong early. A couple of weeks before the shoot, the professor had to reschedule. This delayed it until after Spring break, which will squeeze the production schedule for the brochure the images will appear in first. There wouldn’t be time for a fallback date if anything new went wrong. And yesterday the problems started early. In the morning I got a call from the photographer, whose work I had sold the client on, to inform me he’d broken his ankle over the weekend and wasn’t in any shape to get in and out of a bucket truck. I had to scramble to line up a new one. The morning’s weather was a drenching rain, and it began to look like it would continue through our shoot. Fortunately, we had the lobby of the performing arts center reserved as a backup venue, but we already knew this space would present challenges — with lighting and with traffic from an event that was scheduled to begin during the shoot. I had until 2:45 to decide whether to cancel the truck reservation, and I pushed the decision until about 3:15, watching the sky and the weather radar. Still, in the fifteen minutes after I made the call, the clouds parted and the sun came out — brilliantly. Suddenly it was the perfect day for an outdoor shoot.

But we were committed now, and I headed over to the arts building to meet Kevin, the pinch photographer. I wasn’t in the building for 30 seconds before he told me the only outlet near his planned setup wasn’t working, and his extension cords couldn’t reach any others. We combed the building looking for anyone who could help, but it was the end of the day and it took a while to find someone. At this point, singers were starting to filter in, clad in the brightly colored shirts I’d asked them to wear. I was beginning to get nervous as it dawned on me I didn’t really have a backup plan to go with this backup location. Kevin and I talked out different scenarios and nothing was doing it for either of us. More students showed up. It was becoming obvious that red was the dominant color of the day — in fact, easily two-thirds of the students had on red, pink, magenta, burgundy or some other similar color. Were there enough other-colored shirts to create the bright mix I had in mind? Or would it just look like some people didn’t get the red memo? Then the professor showed up — in the reddest red shirt I’ve ever seen.

After a few minutes of sizing the situation up, he took charge of the group — and the shoot. Maybe he sensed my apprehension. He started arranging the students in a way that looked to me like a youth rally in 1930s Germany, or maybe the Red Guard. They were stiff and in each other’s way of the camera. Now I was getting really nervous, but I knew better than to get into a power struggle. He ordered one kid to move to the front and the kid went into an extended goof as he did so, making the nearby students laugh. I asked the teacher if this was the kind of group that could all be gotten to play that way. 

And then something magical happened: he said, “Well, if you’re going to do that, you might as well have them sing.” Sing. It’s not that I hadn’t thought of that, I just thought I wouldn’t be able to pull it off. And I couldn’t have. But it didn’t occur to me that he could. And from that moment the whole exercise began to come together. With a succinct order, he got the students to reposition themselves in a way that looked natural, as if they were on stage, but in this awkward, non-stage space. He then led them through a stunningly beautiful hymn and, one by one, I could see their faces animate, their bodies relax; the professor became a conductor, with all the expressiveness that job requires. I heard the clicking of the camera begin to accelerate as Kevin started moving around the room in his own choreography. I didn’t need to look at the screen to know that this was working. The shoot had come alive. They were able to squeeze in two more choral pieces before  the event in the auditorium was scheduled to begin and we had to end the shoot.

I haven’t seen the photos yet, but I don’t have to. They’ll be better than I could have planned them to be. Once again, I’ve learned the most valuable lesson an art director can: let go of things and they’ll take care of themselves.