PLANET ZOMBIE

Fan mag free in the latest issue of Metal Hammer.

This was all shot at the end of last year in various locations.  The session with Rob was done in Munich just before Christmas.  It was snowing outside and the gig was in a massive old industrial site.  I set up a studio stage left, screened from the audience by just a black cloth.  All the portraits were done whilst the intro music was playing for the Zombie show.

Not ideal as you couldn’t hear a thing and shouting instructions to Rob was nearly impossible.  Although he heard me say repeatedly ‘I need to see your eyes’ and he chose to ignore it.

The one shot I wasn’t going to leave Germany without was the silhouette and the mike stand.  On that occasion I showed him the pose I wanted and he did it.

Very difficult shoot to do whilst the intro music is playing the crowd are roaring, it’s dark and the rest of the band are waiting for their pictures to be done. The band shots were done on the opposite wall away from the mike stand.  There is a metal staircase just to the left of the band that leads directly onto the stage.  The stage manger was counting down the seconds whilst I was shooting.  2 minutes to go, 1 minute 30 whilst I am positioning the band into a good grouping.   Finished with 30 seconds before the intro music ended.

Mike stand gets taken onto the stage and out walk the band.  I really do make my life difficult.  I could have shot the band at any time during the afternoon but they had to be in their stage gear and that only happens just before stage time.  The dressing rooms were void of any atmosphere so I took the gamble to shoot just before they walked on.  I think it worked well, but after such a frantic shoot, the last thing I wanted was to then shoot a 2 hour show from every angle – which I then went on to do.  I love shooting live but lately a lot of lighting designers are just flooding the stage with an obscene over-saturated LED light. LED is totally different to tungsten light which in theory has a daylight balanced colour temperature but in practise produces a colour burn out effect with digital or film.

The Zombie show is a frenzy of light, monsters and a gigantic video wall.  Rob drives a gigantic robotic machine/monster at one point during the show.  This thing is probably 30 feet long but it is lost on stage by the over use of migraine inducing red light and matching red imagery on the video wall.  How do you lose a 30 foot monster being driven by Rob Zombie?  I am looking right at it with a great composition but it disappears right in front of my eyes.  I have a second remote control camera on the mixing desk shooting at the same time and every frame is just a wash of red with little definition.  Even the pyro’s were lost because the LED lighting was brighter than the flames!  I shot 3 shows on the tour and every night the lighting was the same.  That said, I got some killer shots of the show which I really like, but the show could be visually so much better if the lighting designer toned down the saturation and lit the props in a way that made them stand out.  Flood the stage with colour but use some clean spots to give the props definition and when there is pyro dragons being fired then kill the lights  –  don’t light them brighter than the flames!

I now await several emails from LD’s telling me how to take a picture!