Project Veronica

Here's a sneak peak at a series called Project Veronica that we just rolled out for a sound company called Blorp Corp, "a sonic laboratory specializing in custom and library music solutions for TV, film, and advertising." The premise was for Matt Hubball of Crispin Porter Bogusky and Evan Pollock to be creepy retro scientists constructing the perfect virtual cyborgenic receptionist who will actually answer the phones at Borp Corp.

When Matt Chiabotti of Cactus Communications described the project, I was into it 100%! I love it when clients have conceptual work that involves heavy retouching and compositing. If you have any work like this, please call me. I love it!

The above "assembly" shot was created from about 6 images. The big doors are huge 12' tall metal bi-fold doors that were used in a paint booth when my studio was a car garage. When we remodeled, we took down the doors and had them sandblasted. The doors separate the studio kitchen from the back studio space. I did all the retouching on these images, but Matt Chiabotti put the perfect final touch on this shot by adding the wires sticking out of the arm.

The above "power up" image was really fun to create. This image was made from 3 images. The wooden speakers on the left were duplicated and flipped to create a beefier stand for Evan's sound board. The electricity was created in Photoshop. The chair is a 1920's optometrist chair that Evan and Matt secured just for this shoot. I wish I could keep it for the studio makeup chair! It fit the creepy green theme perfectly.

And here you have the final "receptionist" image. The background is from a firefighter's museum. I remembered seeing it about a year ago during a scouting search. It worked perfectly for Veronica's office. The wall was plain and white, I had a good time staining it up in post. This is one of my favorite images to date.

Art Director: Matt Chiabotti

Stylist: Katelyn Simkins

Update!

I've received several emails from peers asking to show some of the original images to show before and after retouching. So, I'm taking town the curtain to show you some before pictures. I grabbed approximate images used... these may not be the exact images selected for final output.

After a pre-production meeting with the art director and Blorp Corp, I sketched out the shots to help me visualize the composition and lighting.

We only had the model for a limited time, so we had to shoot a lot quickly to get the look we wanted. We started with the "nicest" hair style since we would tear up the hair after the hero shot.

We all agreed that the above image had the robotic feel we were going for.

Above, you can see that the image was off balance with the wood speaker on one side.

Above is a direction I was exploring that used a full body mannequin, but Matt's stellar art direction steered me toward the floating head below. We felt that showing less was more.

Above is the floating mannequin head.

Here is our model who provided the face and arm for the Assembly shot.

We shot the above picture to get the flame and reflections from the flame. I ended up shooting the flame again on a grey background at 1/8000 of a second to freeze the flame and give it good color.

Crew shot below.