Near the end of October, Langford, BC’s, communtiy theatre, Four Seasons Musical Theatre, opened their latest show; Narnia: The lion, the witch and the wardrobe.
They had gotten me to take promotional photos and headshots for them, and as it turned out I ended up shooting a fair bit during rehearsals as well (one of the reasons for that was that my son was in the play, so I was driving him there and picking him up anyway).
For the promo shots I brought in a white seamless backdrop and two strobes. I set up in the hallway of the middle school housing the theatre, and that gave my quite enough room to work in. The kids who played the siblings Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy were a treat to work with (as were, in fact, all the members of the cast and crew), and the assistant director, Heather Senkler, made sure the kids’ poses and facial expressions were according to what the production team had envisioned.
When it came to the headshots, there was one thing I knew I did not want to do: traditional school portrait style photos. Not for this production. Instead I went for a slightly darker approach. Or maybe a bit more than ‘slightly’. I lit up one side of a person’s face while the other half remained in the shade. And I had them turn the shadow side towards the camera. The producers liked the idea right from the start, Narnia being a bit of a dark story and all. Some people were a bit taken aback when they saw their photo on the back of my camera, but when all was said done, and the photos had been printed in black and white and put on display in the lobby before each performance, I think they liked them (at least most of them did).
One of my favourite parts was shooting the dress rehearsal. I was able to move freely around the auditorium, stand on the armrests of the seats, roll around in front of the stage, and even stand on the edge of the stage (only on the sides, as not to cause too much of a distraction to either the cast or director Terry Rowsell), without worrying about obstructing anyone’s view.
Shooting a live theatre performance like this one is a challenge. The stage is sometimes gloomy and almost dark, while at other times it’s ridiculously bright. And I won’t even go into the different colours of the lights. I set the white balance to 3500K about two (very orange) minutes into the play, and if I’d pick out a random photo from that night, it was probably shot at ISO 2000, f/2.8, with a shutter speed of maybe 1/125.
I loved every minute of this. Being involved with a group like the one around Narnia is… energizing, for lack of a better word. The cast and crew were about 60 in all, which is a huge production for a community theatre, and they did a fantastic job of entertaining each and everyone who came to wander the woods of Narnia.
