Creating a 'Stage'

9/30/2023

After finishing the Phantom, I needed to take photos of him. In the stage production he appears on a giant staircase in the middle of a New Year's Eve Masquerade ball, but that is beyond me, so I decided to recreate the same 'stage' set I used for the photos of Christine four years ago..

So I printed out some photos of it and we set to work. Jan hauled up the draperies we used last time, which I had originally found at Value Village. The French doors to the dining room were moved into position to support a beam for the drapes....

The long set of drapes were put up first...

Then the valance was pinned in place, using Rex's height as a guide....

The drapes were tied back, and a second fringed drape was pinned in behind, and plain black fabric was pinned behind that to fill in the hole. This is the back view from the hall....

Now it just needed all the candle stands....

I would light all the candles, and then take the photos straight on, level with the doll's eyes. The photos were all taken in the morning or early afternoon before it got too bright out the dining room window. Then when the candles were lit, it created just the right dramatic lighting I needed....

I'd blow out all the candles after every photo session, change the doll's poses, light the candles again, and take more photos. The candles aren't very big, so burn down too fast, plus it's a lot safer to work with the dolls when the candles aren't lit. I spent two days taking photos, and by the last scene with Rex and Bianca, the candles had become a lot shorter....

The final shot of the two of them...

The key thing to remember when photographing dolls is to always take the photos straight at their eye level. Doesn't matter how tall or tiny they are, if you want the dolls to look 'real', the photos should always be taken straight on at the doll's eye level.

Dorothy

9/30/2023 10:23:49 am

Yeaaa, behind the scenes! I didn't realize that the curtains were actual curtains. I thought that you had created them for the scene. They work perfectly.

I like how you have the dolls' boxes labeled in several places. Are the original boxes inside of these boxes? How did you find just the right size boxes?

Thanks for sharing these photos. It is always fun to see how you create your scenes.

Martha

9/30/2023 10:48:58 am

Yes, those are real, full size curtains.

The boxes under the table are the 'transport' boxes for when I take dolls out on location for photos. Everyone's original company boxes are stored in a walk-in closet in the basement. Those are important to keep, but useless for anything other than tightly fitting a naked doll, which totally defeats the purpose. So we made special cardboard boxes for transporting the doll, in all the sizes for my different dolls, and each one has a soft stuffed mattress in the bottom and a second smaller pillow to go on top of the doll and hold it in place.

So whenever I want to take some doll photos out on location, I just choose the appropriate size box and lay the doll with it's stand in it, and carry them into the car. Eight boxes will fit nicely in the upper storage compartments in our RV and I will change the labels before each trip, so it's easier to pull the right ones out of the overhead compartments. Right now they still have the labels from our last major trip back in 2019. I just keep some fo the most frequently used boxes under the dining room chairs for easy access. But with all the chairs removed for this set, the boxes are all visible.

Dorothy

9/30/2023 07:09:09 pm

Thanks for answering my questions. I like the idea of transport boxes.

I too have a gazillion doll boxes in my house. I keep them in case I want to sell a doll, which rarely happens. The boxes did come in handy when I moved recently. It was time consuming to load and unload the dolls but at least they were safe.

Svenja

9/30/2023 03:52:59 pm

Thanks for the insights. I like the behind the scenes documentary as much as the picture stories.

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Creating a 'Stage'

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