Flying Pixies!

Michele Adams, creative director at Dorland Global needed to come up with an ad for BD Biosciences new and improved diagnostic cell sorter machine. “Wow” how many art directors have had to come up with a creative solution to these types of projects? She was determined to do something more creative than the expected shot of equipment. She came up with the idea of a colorful circus aerialist flying through the air to represent colorful performance the new machine offered.

We both wanted to capture the sense of movement and depth, casting a small pixyish aerialist was the added touch to help convey the magic that goes on inside the machine.

From her past working experiences with me she trusted me to help conjure up the ideal aerialist performer. Casting a small pixyish aerialist was an added asset to the photograph. The metaphorical meaning of the photograph took on an added dimension to the ad. She has become the little color fairy inside the machine. For most technical types this would be scoffed at as pure fantasy. For after all they are serious researchers and little color pixies have no place in science, but to most people it still seams a little bit like magic on how these machines work.

On set the talent gave us her all in fantastic feats of strength on the tissues. (Term used for hanging silks by those circus people in the know.) I also shot a number of exposures of the tissue alone for post production use

There was a considerable amount of CGI work done on this shot and it was done in-house. Knowing the final image would have a rainbow of color applied over the tissues I shot the talent in a white unitard while hanging from the white tissues Plus a large quantity of tissue samples where shot to be used later for post-production.

After selecting the main body/expression image; the construction of the flying tissue took place. After many varieties of flying tissue ideas were developed we selected the one that felt the most like flying through the air. Then the process of adding color begun, again with many variations of color palette and blending to consider.

All it took was hard work and careful notes.