BEHIND THE SCENES...PLANNING A PHOTOSHOOT FOR MY MAKEUP COMPANY | Samantha Ravndahl
Hey you guys. Welcome back to my channel. So today, you know, I keep coming up with these video ideas and I'm like, is this interesting to other people? It's interesting to me, but we'll just have to see what you think about it.
I don't know. I thought that it might be interesting for you guys to see how we go about planning photoshoots for Auric and basically everything that goes into creating the images that we launch alongside our products. Doing photoshoots is one of my favorite things on this planet.
There is no magic quite like being on a photoshoot. I don't know what it is. It's just like so many creatives coming together, it's such an enjoyable experience, I love it so much, and I always leave feeling like super energized and excited and just like, it's the best, okay? So just recently, we had our first ever photoshoot in Vancouver, which was awesome because we haven't gotten to shoot here yet.
Half of our team lives down in the states, so especially with COVID going and stuff like that, I haven't been able to be at most of our photoshoots now, especially our product photography shoots, I haven't been able to go to any of them, unfortunately, but now that people are able to travel a little bit more and stuff, we were able to do one here, which was awesome. So I'm gonna walk you guys through everything that went into that, but before we jump into today's video, I just wanna let you guys know that it is sponsored by Clearco. This is so funny that this came to be because I actually was already working with Clearco before they reached out to me to do a sponsorship on my channel, but the timing lined up very beautifully. So, Clearco is the world's largest E-commerce investor. A lot of you probably know that when we launched, we were completely self-funded, which was honestly very difficult and very scary and it just made things a lot harder. It's obviously exceedingly easier to be able to have investors and tons of capital upfront when you're launching a business, but we kind of were just, you know, being as scrappy as we could, tossing literally everything we had into it, and then once we launched, we kind of started to look into different opportunities in terms of gaining more funding and possibly bringing on investors and stuff like that, but ultimately, we've at this time decided not to bring on anymore investors.
It's just hard to maintain complete control over your company once you get more and more investors involved, and especially if you have investors that are putting forth a lot of capital so that you can really grow your business and do more. They usually wanna take a large percentage of your company. This is where Clearco's great. Let me break it down for you just a little bit here. So we got in touch with Clearco and we had kind of like our preliminary call with them and stuff like that and I remember getting off the phone and we were like in a group chat with the rest of our team and we were like, this sounds too good to be true (giggles) because it was just so simple and so seamless and quick, honestly.
And that's something that also is really difficult, is a lot of the times when you have like investors that you're bringing on or anybody that's bringing on like any amount of capital, it can be the most drawn out process ever. Before, way, way, way before we ever launched, before I was even working with, I was just working with me and my mom and we hadn't met the rest of our team yet, or we hadn't joined the rest of our team yet, and we were talking to one investor for over a year just going back and forth about contracts and different stuff like that, which ended up falling through. Anyways, so Clearco provides funding so that you can kind of grow your business. So the thing that's kind of unique about Clearco is that they take no equity in your company, so that means that they're not going to be owning any part of your company.
Clearco also doesn't require any personal guarantees. So, basically, if they gave funding to Auric, they couldn't then come after me personally to pay back that debt, which is important because it just kind of separates you as a person from your business and they also don't have periodic or compounding interest, so this is a huge thing as well because sometimes taking capital can cause sort of like a two steps forward, one step back situation if there's so much interest and compounding interest, or periodic interest that you are almost putting yourself more in the hole by taking that capital rather than helping your business to move forward, it's kind of moving you backwards a little bit. And honestly, all of those things are really, really hard to find when you're going about trying to get capital, unless you just happen to know a handful of angel investors for some reason.
It's really hard. It's hard as a business and so they're great. We've honestly had no issues with them at all.
It was such an easy process, I can't even describe to you. The first time we got on the phone with them, we were like, okay, when can this happen? And they were like (sighs) Friday? It was a Tuesday, it was a Tuesday when we talked to them. So basically how it works with Clearco, they get kind of a snapshot of your financials going on within your business and then they use that data to identify like growth funding opportunities in less than 24 hours. So it's unbelievable helpful.
If you are a small business and you want to retain 100% ownership of your business, but you need that funding, definitely go check them out. They're great. So thanks so much to Clearco. It's so great when things like this happen and it's a company I already work with and love that reaches out to me for a YouTube thing, so this was just one of those moments.
Love it. So let's jump into it. This whole photoshoot that we planned, (snaps fingers) funded by Clearco marketing budget, okay? So thank you so much Clearco not only for sponsoring today's video, but also for helping small businesses grow like little old Auric. And now, let us dive in...to the video,
which may or may not be interesting. We'll find out. So, this shoot was for our holiday launch. So we have a holiday launch coming up for Auric.
I'm so excited about it, I can't wait, I think you guys are gonna really love it. The packaging, divine. The colors, divine. We have this beautiful limited edition packaging. I'll show you everything in another video because I actually don't have the finished goods yet.
(giggles) That's how hot and fresh out the oven these are gonna be. God, I hate to say it, there's a slight possibility that you guys might have product before I do, okay? Just based on COVID shipping. But with this launch, I wanted to do kind of like an old Hollywood theme. Very glamorous and classic and just super pretty. So the first thing I did was put together a little bit of a Google slideshow presentation thing just compiling images of what I wanted the scenes to look like, what I wanted the hair to look like, the makeup to look like, lighting, all that kind of stuff so that I could send that brief off to our models, our makeup, our hair, our photographer, and then Daniel, who helps kind of like do the art direction and stuff like that on the shoots.
So from there, we needed to find a space, (giggles) which is, (groans) it can be one of the most difficult parts of a shoot, to be honest, is just finding a space that can accommodate the amount of people that you have, especially during COVID has been exceedingly difficult, and also that like kind of fits the vibe that you're going for because the more that a space is already equipped for what you wanna do, the better, especially when it's a shoot like this where we wanted to have a lot of props and we want it to feel kind of like it's own little scene, like we didn't want it to just be like a while backdrop, you know what I mean? And so luckily, we were so, so happy that this ended up working out. My friend, Karl who's been doing my hair for, God, we tried to figure out how long on set, I think eight years I wanna say, if I recall. Yeah, I think he's been doing my hair for eight years. So he, I believe it was last September I wanna say, he opened his own salon with two of his other friends and coworkers.
It's called Happy Birthday Salon. If you're in Vancouver and you're needing a place, definitely go check it out. It's great, they're great. They have such a good team, it's just such a like easy, chill vibe in there.
Love it. So, we asked Karl (giggles) if him and his team would be willing to let us take over his salon for the day to do a photoshoot and he was like absolutely. So, it was so great. I was so happy because the way that they have the salon set up, it already just like so stunning and beautiful. They have these beautiful like big mirrors, they have these kind of like custom wood pink drawer things that they set all of their hairstyling products on top of and everything, and then they have these beautiful green salon chairs and so I kind of liked the idea of that vibe and we were going kind of playing off of like classic holiday tones, like the greens and like the cranberries and stuff like that, so I just felt like the space worked really well and we could utilize a lot of what was already there in the shoot.
So that was our space, and from there, we kind of started just collecting all of the additional things that we wanted to have on set, like all the different props and stuff. And so one thing that we did was we went onto eBay and we found these like vintage perfume bottles. (giggles) There was a listing that was like, it was lot "a lot", so it's just a bunch of like random vintage perfume bottles and stuff like that, but then when we ordered them, they were like this big. They were like little mini perfume bottles, but it ended up working out fine, actually, because the little pink drawer thing was not that big of a space and so it wasn't like these overwhelmingly huge perfume bottles, but we just were like, oh my God, this is what happens when you shop online. So we got these vintage perfume bottles and then we also, this was so sick, we were able to get these real vintage Cosmo magazines, so it was so cool. We got two of these different vintage Cosmo magazines so that we could kind of have that on set as well.
And then we also got this like vintage Victoria's Secret robe. So we had kind of these like fun little pieces that were actually truly vintage and it was just kind of nice to be able to mix those things in with stuff that was like a little bit more modern so it would give it that sort of like old Hollywood feel. So as were kind of pulling images of like what we wanted the different scenes to look like and stuff like that, we were seeing a lot of like velvet kind of fabrics and stuff like that and satins as well, so I went to a fabric store that I love so much, this is like the classic case of don't judge a book by its cover, okay? (giggles) There is this fabric store in Surrey, BC called Save on Fabric. It's on King George if you live in the area. It is the best fabric store in the world.
First of all, it's dirt cheap. Secondly, they have like an outrageous amount of fabrics and they're all stunning. I love them. I've been shopping there for years getting fabric for backdrops and different stuff like that.
And so that was exactly what I did. I went and grabbed a few different fabrics. So I got this kind of like beautiful olivey fabric, which we used as a backdrop behind a bunch of the photos, I also got like kind of a cranberry velvet fabric that was like a little bit more crushed looking, and same thing, we used that as a backdrop in some of the other photos, and then I got this really pretty satin, which we ended up hanging behind, we had both of the models shooting together and we had this nice kind of like cream satin just like hanging behind them, and the thing that was nice about having those fabrics is that it kind of helped us separate off the space because the way that the salon is set up is like it's kind of like really long and narrow and so we were able to kind of like close off so that you couldn't see behind into like the rest of the salon, so we would kind of close it off and create like a little backdrop that way with the fabrics. Then, we decided to do some furniture and prop rentals as well.
So, anytime that we can rent, we choose to just so that everything's getting a second life and you're not buying new things for set, you know what I mean? So buying anything that's used, renting stuff when we can is like phenomenal. So a lot of you might know that Vancouver does a ton of filming, like X-Files and stuff like that, a lot of that was filmed here, there's way more recent things. I don't know why X-Files is always what comes to mind, but a ton of movies and TV shows and stuff like that are filmed here. Riverdale's filmed here, that's a new age thing for the hip kids. Anyways, lots of different shit, and because of that, Vancouver has a lot of prop houses. So prop houses, you can go to to get props.
You can get furniture, you can get dishes, you can get license plates. Literally, anything and everything that you could possibly think of, they have it and they have it from all kinds of different eras as well. So our first inclination was to reach out to prop houses and try and find some like vintage telephones and different shit like that.
(giggles) Again and again, all of these prop houses, they only rented to like movie productions, like they wouldn't rent to just people and then I found one that I was like, I think that they might rent to just people and I called them and I was like, "Hey, do you rent to normal people?" And they were like, "Yeah, for sure." And I was like, "Great, awesome." And then he was like, "Just let us know the name of your production company." (giggles) And I was like, god dammit. Hello? I am a production company. So the prop house direction didn't work for us, needless to say, and then I found this rental company called Bespoke Decor and so it looks like they do predominantly weddings, but they had a bunch of different stuff.
They had like tons of different decor things, they had a bunch of furniture and stuff like that, and so we rented a bunch from them. So we got this really beautiful kind of like seafoam sagey green, like little loveseat thing with this like beautiful wood detailing, we got these two little like chairs that were this beautiful pink velvet with like wood, we got this like old vintage telephone, and some like pretty glass tray and some milk vases and stuff. They were so great, the team was super, super helpful. Oh yeah, the divider! Oh my God! When I was on their website, they had these like rattan dividers that were so beautiful and I was like, oh my God, this would be perfect because again, we needed kind of like a way to close off the space so that we could set up kind of like our own backdrop. And when I called to be like, I sent through the list and then I called them to ask questions about the delivery and stuff like that and they were like, "Oh yeah, the list, great picks and stuff like that." They were like, "The only thing that we might not have is the rattan divider 'cause it's really popular right now," and I was like, "NO!" (giggles) But we were able to end up getting it.
So this was like such a stress-free option because we didn't have to pick up anything, we didn't have to drop anything back off the next day because we had like back-to-back meetings the days after because it's so rare that our team gets all together, so when we do, we like really fucking hunker down and work. So, they dropped everything off in the morning, they picked everything up at night and it was just perfect. It was so simple, so seamless, they were great, it was awesome. Oh my God, what a moment this was.
(snaps fingers) Nordstrom, baby. (claps) Nordstrom always pulls through, okay? I fucking love Nordstrom, specifically the Nordstrom In Vancouver. I'm not biased, I swear to God. It's the best Nordstrom there is. Here's the thing about photoshoots, I feel like it's easy to be biased in one direction and feel like as long as you have a good makeup artist, it won't matter, as long as you have a good hairstylist, it won't matter, as long as you have a good photographer, it won't matter kind of thing.
It's literally everything. It's everything coming all together and I feel like before I started doing more photoshoots with Auric, the thing that I kind of always left to the back of my mind was clothing and when we did our first ever shoot, we had an actual stylist onset. It was like for some reason, the hardest pill for me to swallow. I was like, oh my God, we're paying somebody to bring clothes? I know that it's not an easier, simple job and I know that it is like very time-consuming for them to go pick out clothing, but it just feels so like, damn, like so expensive for just clothing, you know what I mean? It's not just clothing.
It is so important. It literally is like every single piece has to be perfect to have it come together and be a great photo. And that's why working on set is so special because all of these people in every single department know exactly what they need to do to like come together to create this image and not one part of that can falter.
No pressure. So this shoot was like a little bit smaller. We only had the two models, so we were like okay, I think we can take this on, and I reached out to my manager and I was like, listen, can we get in touch with Nordstrom? (laughs) And Nordstrom, thank God, was willing to loan us some clothing for the shoot. Me and Daniel, again, I'm clearly hopeless with clothing because obviously, I only wear sweaters, we all know this, it's fine, I called Daniel and I was like, can you fly out early? (giggles) He was gonna fly out the night before the shoot kind of thing and I was like, can you fly out early so that we can go shopping together so that we can get stuff because I'm not going to be able to pick out clothes for this shoot.
And so he flew out and we went to Nordstrom and did all of our pulls. We were like kids in a fucking candy shop, okay? We were picking up everything that was on the floor being like, what about this, is this fucking crazy? We were having the time of our lives. I need to just like point out a few outfits in particular that I really, really loved. First of all, this like little set. (groans) my God.
It was like this little set from Givenchy, which was like this kind of little crop T-shirt sort of thing, but like the most beautiful fabric you've ever seen, and then this long skirt and it had this gold chain across. It was stunning, okay? And then we had this tiny little set from Balmain, which was like this red super holiday, it felt almost kind of like Chanel style and it was like this little tank top and like skirt set. It was so cute. I was like, I wish I can keep that.
And then, at the last second, we were almost done doing all of our pulls and we were kind of like heading back to go look at everything and take stuff out and see what we needed and we found this gigantic fur coat and I was like, please be faux fur, please be faux fur, and it was. It was like this huge, beautiful faux fur coat and it was just so sick and looked so boss. The model, when she came out wearing it, we were all like (giggles). She just looked so cool. So anyways, we were super grateful, so thank you so much to Nordstrom.
Alongside booking all of the props, and the rentals, and getting the fabric and all that kind of stuff, I also was booking the models, which this is like arguably my least favorite part of setting up shoots because (sighs) anytime we do a shoot, I'm like, how 'bout 12 models? No? Not enough? I always wanna have so many people on set because I start looking at models and I'm like, well they're all perfect, so maybe they should all be hired. I think we can make it work if we do an 18 day-long shoot, we have 12 photographers on set as well. So it's always really hard for me to narrow down the people that I want, but we found these two beautiful models.
So we had Ava and Kiyoni on set and they were both fantastic. Stunning, beautiful, really just like excited to jump in with their own ideas as well. I love that. I love when people are like, let's try this, you know what I mean? Even if it's somebody that like you're not the photographer or you're not the art director or whatever, I love when people jump in saying like, could we do this, because I feel like so often that results in the best images and Ava at one point was like, "Could I be like up behind Kiyoni and like have my face sort of like close to her face, almost as if I'm whispering in her ear or something?" And that was one of my favorite images from the entire shoot.
This was also the part that I feel like I'm not as good at, is booking the models for a number of reasons, but because I have such a hard time remembering all the things that I need to tell them because like telling them whether or not they need to show up without nail polish on, or like sending them to get their nails done beforehand, or for them to do their nails on set, or like can they have eyelash extensions in, what kind of things do they need to bring to set, all that kind of stuff is so hard for me to remember. That's something that I feel like I need to work on in the future, but regardless, it worked out great. Then for hair, we had Karl on set. It was so great. I haven't had the chance to work with Karl for anything like Auric related yet and I'm so glad I did get the chance.
He's so unbelievably talented. It was so cool to like be able to work sort of like in our hometown and work with all of these people that we've known and loved for so long. So Karl was on hair. He killed it.
He put up with all of my annoying requests. I was like sitting at the back of the shoot, the photographer will have like a laptop that shows the images as we're shooting so we can kind of like keep an eye on things and be like, okay, we need to jump in there and we need to like hide a tag on the clothing, or we need to brush the hair here, or whatever, and I was like, I had a little iPad as well, like the images were going onto the laptop and to an iPad and I was sitting at the very back of the salon and they were shooting at the very front and I was like, "Karl, can you change this clip?!" I kept asking to change these clips from like one side to the other because we had these like, nobody cares, we had like these two gold clips and then there was like pink clips and white clips and we had a pink and a gold and then we were shooting this side and I was like, "Can you move it so that they're both gold clips on that side? So like take the pink clip out and put the gold clip in." And he was like, "Oh, sure." And then she changed sides and I was like, "Karl, I'm so sorry, can you go change those clips again?" (laughs) I was just watching on my little iPad in the back like yelling to the front the things that I wanna change.
Then for makeup, this is so fun as well, some of you guys might know Trey, who is a friend of mine that was also my makeup teacher back in the day, so when I went to makeup school an eternity ago, Trey was my special effects teacher. And we had planned to do a little kind of like tiny shoot together that was gonna be like a video shoot before, was that before launch? Yeah, it was. We had planned to do this before launch and then like the week before we were gonna do the shoot, BC had kind of tightened their COVID restrictions and we still could've gotten around it work wise because of how the restrictions were setup at the time. You could have that many people in a room working, but I was just like, I feel like it's not worth it. I was also pregnant and I was just like, oh my God, let's just not, so we ended up canceling the shoot and we didn't get to work together and I was like so sad about it because Trey, number one, is just like so unbelievably talented, but she's also so, so busy because of that and so the fact that I had gotten a little slice of her schedule, I was like so amped.
And then it didn't end up working out, but I contacted her for this shoot, I was like, can you please, and she was like, I'm just on set, but I think I could probably come home early, so she ended up flying in the night before from a set that she was working on in a different province to do makeup for this shoot and it was just (sucks teeth), I don't even know what to tell you, okay? She is just like so talented, so professional, such a hard worker. I'm just gonna direct you to this image either here or here because I need you to look at this eye makeup and I just need to tell you right now that this is an unretouched photo. It's color treated, but the makeup itself was not touched.
That's how immaculate it was, okay? She just fucking whipped this out on set and we were all like, damn. Okay, Trey. The photographer, this was also actually a nightmare to book. So our first shoot down in LA, we did with a woman named Lauren Naylor and she is phenomenal, we love her so much. We've gotten to work with her, well, I haven't gotten to work with her more than once, but the LA team has worked with her more than once on a few different little shoots, but she was so great and when were planning to do this shoot in Vancouver, she had sent through a list of photographers that she knows in the Vancouver area and that she really likes. So I reached out to one of the people that were like my favorites from that shoot.
That person wasn't available, but they were like here are some other people that I really love in the area, and I was like great, and from that list, I found another photographer that I really liked and we went to go book with them and then at like literally the last second, we ended up having a (sighs) vaccination-related issue, so then I was scrambling 'cause I had been talking to that person for over a week at that point planning to do this and then it was like literally like, I don't even know if it was week before the shoot at this point. I think it was like four days before that we ended up finally finding out that it wasn't gonna work out with this person. And from that same list that that other photographer had given me, we found Bree Avery. And so Bree, thank God, happened to be free on that day and she just brought it home for us. So, jumped on the phone with her, kind of explained to her the whole idea around the shoot and stuff like that. I have to say, she's like one of the most diligent people I've ever worked with.
She went to the salon beforehand to like scope out the space and see kind of what it would be like lighting wise and what kind of stuff she would need to rent to make sure that she was gonna be able to properly light the space because it was kind of like a weird shape. It wasn't like this huge expansive studio, you know what I mean? It's a salon. It's like a working place and there's things that can't be moved in there. And she just did such a phenomenal job and she was, again, so easy to work with, she was really open to other people jumping in with different ideas and stuff.
So she had her team with her as well helping her set up all of her equipment and lighting, and the lighting, they just nailed, man. It was just so, so, so perfect. We had kind of in that little document that I put together at the very beginning, I had kind of like lighting examples that I really loved and she just (snaps fingers) made it happen. Love it, love to see it. And then finally, all this came together. We got some beautiful, beautiful photos out of it.
I'm so happy with how it turned out. I can't wait for you guys to see the launch and like all of the campaign images and everything and the website's gonna be so sick. I'm so excited. So that is everything.
I hope that was interesting for you, getting a little bit of a behind-the-scenes. Maybe it's not, I don't know. You let me know. (giggles) 'Cause I would love to do more videos like this.
I also thought it'd be really cool to walk you guys through developing a product and kind of like film that whole process of developing one of our future launches or something. I don't know. I'm a woman of the people.
You let me know what you want, okay? All right you guys, that is everything. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you again to Clearco for sponsoring today's video and I will see you guys next time.
Peace out.
2021-11-24 01:54
