We're having a monster shoot!

A few posts ago you will have met Hugo Monster - or at least seen him begin to take shape.

This post is a wee bit belated, as our shoot took place back in March, but here we can show you some delightful "behind the scenes" images and then unveil our beautiful photos taken by Stephen A'Court.

Hugo (the blue mask on the right) was co designed by myself and Tree, and created through over 40 hours of frantic late night foam carving (I am still picking it out of my socks in June!) and fur cutting.

The beautiful Love Bird costume is a Cathy Tree Harris creation through and through, and although I helped cut and glue various pieces of lace, feathers and fluff, I have to say I'm a very lucky girl to be able to wear this gorgeous frothy piece of loveliness! Tree made this costume for my character The Avian Belle.

Our makeup artist was Dara Wakely (Thanks Dara!!!) who threw herself into the project wholeheartedly, here she is putting furry touches on Tere who is the heart and soul of Hugo.

Dara is extremely busy working on The Hobbit at the moment, like so many Wellington creatives; but we are assured she will be returning to design our makeup for the Monster Burlesque show. I can't wait to see what she comes up with!

Thanks to Toi Poneke for allowing their weekend receptionist (moi) to skive off early, and thanks to David for covering for me while I was crimped and painted and prettied! This was the first time I have had my hair made into perfect zigzags...

While I was getting primped, Tere took a very sensible opportunity to get some shut-eye... it was entirely too early to be painted blue!

Besides which we wanted him to conserve his energy for the shoot.

Tere is an instructor for Parkour Wellington, and we were hoping he could get up to some mischief at the Moorings in the Hugo suit.

Dara turned me into a feathered fantasy... I barely recognised myself.  The Avian Belle character is tied to my love of birds and flight... there is a series of old fairy-tales that tell about fairy women with bird skin cloaks, who can turn into swans (or cranes in some stories) and fly away. This idea of freedom and transformation has always fascinated me.

After his little nap, Tere is raring to go!

Our incredible location was the aged and curious mansion

"The Moorings" a building so full of interesting decay, texture and light, that you feel like you are in a time machine, or perhaps an old book. Wellingtonians lucky enough to know the place will reminice fondly about the amazing dressup parties they have been to there... it is definately one of Wellington's treasures.

 Apologies now for the darkness in some of these images... here is the team : Mary Laine (our fantastic producer), Maria Dabrowska (choreographer), Stephen A'Court (photographer), Aaron Black designer), Cathy Tree Harris (Costumier) and of course Tere and I.

Tree laced me into the corset (below) and I thought of women who once had to wear such things as a daily article of clothing, subject to the strictures of feminine fashion of the day.

Now, I felt a slight guilty pleasure at being able to wear such a thing. It seemed to hug me, to hold me tight. The constriction was comforting. The Love Bird costume has layers of lace, organza, satin and sequins. There are ostritch feathers in the skirt and the headdress, and the corset is a dream in silver, grey and pink. The matching feather fans in this shoot were custom made by Flo Foxworthy Costumier - who specialises in hand dyed and made burlesque performance fans!

Tree giving suggestions to Hugo... you can see the amazing water staining in the wall paper. The Ballroom, where we did the shoot had a mezzanine balcony, and a very high ceiling with old glass panelled skylights.   Before I forget, I should also mention that Stephen has an exhibition on at Toi Poneke Gallery at the moment: Toi - Portraits of Toi Whakaari Alumni. It is beautiful and on until July 3 so do get in and have a look!

The light streaming in through the dirty glass, comined with Stephen's clever lighting set up lent an angelic glow to the proceedings... even if our outfits and behaviour were less than angelic!

Carrying on with costumes.

As I think I have mentioned before, the costuming in Monster Burlesque is a huge part of the show.
We are extremely lucky to have Cathy Tree Harris as an essential part of the Monster Burlesque team, and she is amazing as my costume mentor.

A mock up of a werewolf muzzle in card... how long is too long?

With multiple furry monster costumes, werewolves,  giant roosters and dancing girls there's a heap to do.
We have a wonderful team of costume volunteers - and this weekend we will be stitching it up with the monster masks, penis pasties and werewolf muzzles.

Here are some pictures of our workroom... full of creativity and mess!
The werewolf masks are getting tested first, as we need to make sure the aerialist can work in them, and the dancers can see past their noses!

Making the monster suits are next up, and so we padded up a dress dummy to suitable cuddly proportions to measure and start creating the patterns. To keep myself entertained you can see I was watching House of Flying Daggers in the background...

I love the costuming in that film... such gorgeous patterns and textures.
It can be quite distracting though, to work with films on in the background, you can get sucked into the tense bits!


Here is a bit of a progression on the monster mask mockup...
I needed to create a monster mask that can be comfortable, light weight and easy for dancers to move in.
This is a front view, on a glass head. The brown felt is creating larger cheek and eyebrow forms. I have left the forehead and eye area clear, so that we can really go crazy on the eye makeup!
The nose looks a bit weird here as it is still fluffy - it gets covered with different fabric later.

 This is a side view with the eyebrows done in a contrasting fabric.
They can be different shapes to add different feels and looks to the characters.


Below is the hood, almost finished, with ears attached.
They are supposed to look quite ridiculous, and this one looks very "cutie cute" because the light blue fabric is so pretty. Once i get into the more interesting colours of fur, things will be a little more funky!

 And here I have attached a the horns.
Fun to make and fun to wear :)