What a surprise when Yanis, a friend from my skatepark days, proposes me to create his first lookbook from a brand new wool collection called Maison Izard ! The idea was to promote the prototypes in order to launch a crouwdfounding campain to launch the production, as saying that the rendering must pop !

Location

As the shooting was planned for only one day with our three models Alice, Helene and Nicolas, the location chosen has to be in the Pyrenees (birthplace of the brand and the wool), presenting multiple landscapes possibilities (not so far one to another), and above all not so touristic. Another factor taken into account: it has to be outside the Pyrenees National Park, as the authorization was denied to use the park landscapes for commercial purpose. What a pity…

The choice fell on the Val d’Azun: not far from home, presenting all above interesting aspects, and in this early november period, a pretty snow fall was perfect to polish the stage !

Ambience

The mountain context was easily set, now we had to play with lights to create the cozy ambience allowed by the wool. Four main spots were decided, all in the same valley:

• The Estaing lake to begin in a wide spot
• Just over, a snowy forest spot to create a campfire
• A little higher, the Tech lake allows us to follow a bright river
• To finish, a huge campfire when the night was fallen.

Those locations made a very little story where the products are highlighted to keep an idea of warm ambience and colors in spite of the cold context (facilitated by the snow).

Setup

As the final edit was very short, and the purpose was to show as products as possible, we avoid every B-roll shots like timelapses or drone. Let’s go to the heart of the matter and focus on clean slow-mo shots. In order to achieve this, the setup was pretty simple: almost all the rushs are coming from the Red Raven + 16-35L F/2.8 II mounted on Ronin MX, in 4K 16:9, 120fps. Simple and effective !

The 16-35mm on a full frame DSLR is like a mandatory lens for landscape, lifestyle or sport, but taking into account the 1.87 crop factor of the Red Raven in 4K, it becomes a perfect stardard zoom from around 30 to 70mm, a range really useful in this situation.

Only the night part was taken with the 50mm F/1.4 for a need of light, from 60fps to 120fps.

Conclusion

The main goal was to avoid any too time-consuming scene to allows us to achieve the 4 locations: the initial plan wasn’t as defined as it should, but improvisation is certainly part of the natural style visible in the final rendering. Also, as weather was very changing, improvisation allows us to use the best locations depending on light possibilities, instead of following a too rigid schedule. Planning is cool, but overhauling it is even better !