Promo Shoot: Stephen Colfer – Comedian

I’ve just uploaded a bunch of new promo shots of actor/comedian Stephen ‘Pip’ Colfer taken in the Hotshotz Photography Studio last month.

For those of you who don’t know Pip, here’s a couple of facts; he’s an actor, I once dropped him on his head whilst attempting to direct him as an actor, he can’t see purple, he assures me he couldn’t see purple before I dropped him on his head. He’s really into computer games, he recently began podcasting about computer games, he also writes game reviews for Culch.ie and has a growing collection of game related t-shirts.

Over the course of the past few months he has gotten into stand-up comedy and it came as no surprise to me that when we discussed doing a promo shoot; it would somehow be game related.

We did however want to keep it simple; so we hit the HotShotz Studio in Callan (thanks Benny) on a Sunday afternoon, bringing every kind of console controller we could get our hands on, joined by Aileen Johnson whose job was to “make Pip look good” and play his Nintendo DS in the background all day.

This was my second shoot in a studio and my second Canon shoot using an EOS 5D with a EF24-105mm zoom lense, I did try some shots using a 70-200mm but didn’t use any of them in the end. The studio is now set up with a wireless trigger system so hopefully next time I’ll be able to use my own gear and avoid all the frustration of not knowing where buttons and settings are.

We played around getting various comedian-esque poses and expressions with the mic stand and then the mic on it’s own; including my favourite “mic in the air” shot. Then we moved to the shots with console controllers, I was hoping to get more of a twisted perspective on these shots but the lens just wouldn’t work with me.

We also tried some Johnny Cash style shots using guitar hero instruments but they didn’t quite work out. I think they’d work better outdoors so maybe it’s something we’ll re-visit in the future.

Post-wise; as I worked on the photos, they were still looking too much like portraits so I added a vignette just to add to the promo shot feel. You can check out my comedian promo shots of Stephen ‘Pip’ Colfer here and here on the Oss237.com homepage where you’ll also find links to the rest of the shots.

As always any comments or feedback is appreciated and don’t forget to keep an eye on Pip’s blog for announcements of upcoming shows.