Tear Sheets

Wednesday 18 September 2013

Secrets

Hi lovelies!!

I haven't blogged in a while, so I thought I'd share with you guys a project I worked on last year: A music video for a young singer and her Band: Jenn & 166.

Jenn and her family are personal friends. I refer to her mum, Sandra, and her dad, Ian, as my adopted parents, and Jenn and her older sister Paige as my little sisters. When Jenn asked me to do her makeup for her music video, I didn't hesitate.

The song is called "Secrets", and the story of the video is that of Jenn being forced to work with a boy that no one likes at school, and finding that she actually hits it off with him because all he really needed was for someone to encourage him and talk to him.

My challenge was to make Jenn up in her punky style but still let her youth shine through since she was only 17! I also helped her style her wardrobe for the video. The young man that played the Boy in the video is the son of a friend of mine, and he also did a fantastic job. He had never done anything like it before, and he impressed everyone on set with his professionalism and willingness to do whatever we wanted. I styled his wardrobe and helped even out his 17-year-old-acne-prone skin for filming. FYI: Ian (who is also Jenn's Manager) plays the school teacher, and Paige is also in the video as one of the students. See if you can spot her! Sandra refused to be in the video, but she played her usual mother hen self in the background, taking care of everyone.

Most of the lighting was natural except for the 'concert' type shots.

To preserve Jenn's youth for the video, I made sure her skin was healthy and glowing for pretty much every shot, regardless of how much foundation or concealer I had to use. She has pretty good skin, so there wasn't a whole lot of cover-up necessary, and any foundation I used I kept quite sheer and dewy, which meant lots of touch ups because it was SO HOT while we were filming and poor Jenn was just sweating like a pot cover at some points! I didn't mind though, that's all part of the job.

In the first scene (the school scene) I left Jenn's skin almost bare, highlighted her and gave her a gentle rosy flush on the cheeks and lips, and placed a pop of teal and purple liner on her eyes. For the Beach scene we did something similar, except that the pop of colour was a salmon shadow in the outer crease, which I then amped up a bit by added purple shadows and black liner for her solo beach shots and the main performance shots (the one where she's wearing jeans). We also added some rhinestones because Jenn loves them. I only had about 10 minutes to dial the beach look up because the most incredible sunset was just starting, and we knew it would only last about 15 minutes. That was nerve-wracking!

The most involved look is the night-time club performance. Jenn wanted something more dramatic, and my challenge was to make it dramatic but fun. I was adamant that I wanted to make sure she still looked like a teenager! I went with extreme black glitter winged liner and I added some MAC 3D Silver to brighten it, and I stuck to bright pink lips. I added a few black stars for their funky youthfulness. 

And while touching her up between shots the director was struck with inspiration for a piece of storyline, and pulled me into the video. You'll see it! I had taken the time, though I was exhausted after a long day of filming, to do my own face, and I'm eternally grateful I did!!!

Click this link to watch the video (My iPad won't let me embed the video *booo*). Please share it and support Jenn & 166!

I want to add that it's really beautiful to see how Jenn's family came together to help her make this dream of being a professional singer start to come true. Their unconditional love for one another and the way they support and look out for each other is truly inspiring! The Music Video was produced by Cherokee Black Records.