Bloctopussy

I was asked to do a promo shoot for Belfast Roller Derby at the weekend -the aim was to get posters for their next home bout with the theme being Octopussy. First stop was the Original Octopussy film poster and figuring out how to re-create this. It looked like it could be done with four shots layered in Photoshop, using one shot as a base/background and then adding in the extra sets of arms.

I selected the potential arm positions in pairs (four sets) and decided to shoot these in a sequence. The key was going to be to get my male (James Bond) model to stay perfectly still. The setup for the shoot was as follows:

Lighting was provided by 2 Nikon SB-700 flash guns on TTL mode, with shoot-through umbrellas. Canera was set up with 1/160 shutter speed, f 8 and ISO 100 and I was using a Nikon D800 (full manual, RAW files) with a Nikon f1.8 50mm lens. Focus was locked on the models and then switched to manual focus to stop the camera's af changing focus during the sequence of shots and the shutter was triggered with a remote cable release.

We did a total of four run-throughs of the sequence of shots and this sequence was the one which seemed the best:

Some basic adjustments were done in Lightroom (cropping, exposure, saturation) and then synchronised to all four shots before exporting them to Photoshop. Starting with the base photo (above left) I added the next photo as a new layer underneath the background layer and then used the eraser tool to rub through the background, exposing the second set of arms. I then flattened the image and repeated the process with shot three and then shot four. After this, I made some minor adjustments using the dodge and burn tools and also used the dodge tool to make the background completely white. This gave me the final image:

All in all, an enjoyable afternoon's shoot and a reasonably good end product to pass on to the people who are producing the finished posters. I'll try to remember to post an image of the poster once it's available.

Major thanks to to my models Katie and Fintan and to Sarah and Barbie from Belfast Roller Derby who looked after the organisation and managed the shoot on the day.