I was recently commissioned to do a shoot for Network Ten’s new reality drama “Recruits”, for advertising and promotion of the new show on billboards, bus shelter light boxes and print ads. The shoot took place in a lane way just outside the Sydney Central Local Area Command’s Police station. The series follows a group of police recruits from training through to their first days on the beat and beyond. It is the first time that level of access has been given to a t.v. crew in Australia, and looks to be pretty promising in terms of “reality” programming as it is a lot more real than say putting 15 people in house full of cameras!
The brief was for the shots to be as gritty and real as possible and to try and show the personality/vulnerability of the recruits. I had under one hour to do the shoot as two of the probationary officers were actually on duty and could have been called away at any minute, so much so that one had to have his radio at his ear during all of the shoot. The shoot was challenging in the sense that the time with the three recruits was limited and the number of shots and variety of compositions was such that I knew an hour would not be enough. I used a little fill from a single Elinchrom Ranger head shot through a 40 inch shoot through umbrella to fill the shadows from the police hats and slightly drop the ambient light on the alley in background to create a bit more of a dark gritty alley feel. In post the saturation was dropped a little and the blacks pumped up a bit for the final print version, but overall very minimal re-touching.
Click below for the original shot from the camera as well as some examples of the shot on bus shelter light boxes in Sydney’s central business district. The show starts this Monday at 8 pm on Ten. Continue reading