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Harpers Bazaar

Producer: Laura Brown

CG Supervisor: J.J. Blumenkrantz

Still photography:Jeffrey Westbrook

Special thanks to Sony Pictures Animation

Creative Director: Stephan Gan

Design Director: Elizabeth Hummer

Photo and Bookings Director: Zoe Burns

Heidi: How did this collaboration work? Did you get sketches of the Smurfettes in order to shoot the products at the right angle? Were the accessories shot on a model or a form built to scale for the Smurfette?

Jeffrey: The whole thing started with an idea and some rough sketches from Harpers Bazaar and Sony Pictures. Harper’s fashion dept pulled some accessories together to create 4 different looks and the idea was to shoot the accessories on a live model in the desired poses from said sketches. Basically I would light each look for the accessories, then the designer from Sony would step in to shoot a 360 degree view of my set to recreate lighting angles in post on their Smurfette. He would then collect my raw files along with his 360 shots and toss them to his team, who would strip out the accessories and place them on their digital Smurfette. The shoot happened in Hearst’s digital studio and we all had a great time.

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13 Comments

  1. Ugh.

  2. agreed. i’m sure they worked hard on this, but since the movie trailers are creeping me out pretty badly, this is no different. interesting to read about the process, though.

  3. geez, what is wrong with people?

    Just step back for a second and think about what you are looking at and why.

    the production is good though.

  4. Really interesting process. It would be a cool behind the scenes video if they showed the the whole procedure from beginning to end.

  5. Can’t what for the new Canon CGI Mimic 1Ds.

  6. The Blue really doesn’t work with several of the boots and handbags well except maybe the black polka dot. Then again why was the same white dress used on all four poses?

    My wife was showing me an add from either Nordstrom or Steve Madden and the production was decent for the Internet. (Not a high fashion production vs Vogue ads etc.) The design was still appealing, yet far from this.

    I imagine that Sony had more influence than Harpers. Great post as you would expect from seasoned CG talent. I wonder what the budget was for this ball park number? Sorry just my thoughts on something unusual…

    • The same white dress was probably used in all four poses because 1) this is a story about accessories. not dresses, shirts, sweaters or pants and 2) fortuitously, it’s Smurfette’s dress that she always wears, it also blends into the background well so the accessories pop.

      • Nice! I did find the white dress distracting though.

  7. Reminds me of the whole photographs of dolls genre, which I haven’t thought about in awhile. It’s an interesting niche.

  8. Damn she looks fine! Anyone know who did her hair and makeup?

  9. I find this sort of interesting as a challenge to the photographer. However, catalogs do this all the time when a piece isn’t on set by the time the shoot is over. Shoot the model in a body suit then shoot the dress on another model in the same pose at a later time and comp.
    I have to say though, with all that massive CGI effort and the reflections are that terrible? Especially the first one. Woof.

  10. Just saw this and all I can say is, thank god the responses represent my thoughts. I was really worried that there would be all these “rave reviews” and I’d be thinking that I was missing something. I understand commercial work, but this sucks. Everyone has gotta make a buck in this economy so I don’t blame the photographer, but the whole layout looks like it was overly thought out by the smurf marketing department and the magazine was looking to not loose an account.


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