Shooting the Shoot

It's May, the sun's blazing and Birmingham Royal Ballet have just celebrated Christmas — presents, snow, carols, the works. And before you start to question the globally renowned company's basic grasp of the Gregorian calendar, they've been shooting promo pics for their winter production of The Nutcracker, along with the rest of their 2018/19 season. For the first time, the company is ditching green screens in favour of taking its dancers on location — with three shoots in five days no less. Here's the view from behind the scenes.

Design Exec Lee Armstrong's been at Birmingham Royal Ballet for more than fifteen years but The Nutcracker shoot was his first experience of organising outdoor photography. Taking place at Malvern's Madresfield Court (the oldest house outside the royal family never to be sold, fact fans), Lee had to be creative when it came to props that wouldn't leave a trace. "We tested four types of snow — it had to be biodegradable. In the end, there was an undulating snow blanket for the floor, plain flour in the trees (and dusting the presents — which yes, we wrapped ourselves) and a snow cannon, which created the flakes you can see in photographer Bella Kotak'shair. And if it had rained, the whole thing would have looked like messy cotton wool — it was such a gamble". On the day itself the temperature actually got down to 5°C which is why, if you look carefully, you'll spot dancer Karla Doorbar in her leggings. "Karla was essentially wearing a nightie for most of the shoot — we had three hot water bottles and bundles of coats, on standby."

Over the same weekend, the shoot took care of the company's brilliantly dark production of Beauty and the Beast. The key images were captured in the library of Madresfield, echoing the opening scene of the production where Belle sits reading a book. The picture above shows Brandon Lawrence as the Beast, taking a well-deserved break between takes. "The Beast's full costume involves a lycra base, haunches, a frock coat and a rug like cloak over all of that — 12.6kg of costume. Oh and that mask." Made by Robert Allsop who's worked on huge scale projects like Gladiator, X-Men and Doctor Who, Lee explained that the mask is both "notoriously hard to breathe in and very hot", which sounds less than ideal when you're taking on the lead role in a fast-paced ballet, 96 minutes in length.  

The shoot for Hobson's Choice, a comedy set in 1880, found itself smack bang in the city centre, in an arcade built in almost the exact same year — a very deliberate choice. "We are three things, and we are equally those things: Birmingham, Royal, Ballet. And each of those things has meaning — the Birmingham part is as important as the ballet part. Shooting in the public thoroughfare which is the Great Western Arcade was brilliant for so much more than its inherent drama. Brummies were fascinated." And given customers and commuters were wandering into a Victorian arcade with dancer Beatrice Parma in period dress, leg literally behind her head, with an army of photographers, lighting assistants, a choreographer and a makeshift dressing room in the unit next to Jaeger, the reaction makes sense.

The finished snaps of Brum will be seen in promo material across the length and breadth of the country and on computer screens and in magazines around the world. And while Birmingham Royal Ballet has shifted its focus to the logistically fraught world of on-location photoshoots, the attention to detail for which they are famed will be found as much in the post-production Photoshop wizardry, as it is in their painstakingly precise costume and make-up departments. Those customers milling around in every shot will, of course, vanish, while the arcade's modern signage will be intricately replaced by Victorian calligraphy. Hell, even the wine bottle in the brown paper bag (pictured, top) will need some modern-day magic. "Apparently," says Lee with a chuckle, "screwtops weren't a thing in the 1880s." 

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PICTURES: Bella Kotak — BRB, Hobson's Choice (top), Drew Tommons — BRB, Hobson's Choice (bottom)