Wearing extreme fashionista on a music video

I am on set today for a music video wearing what can only be described as extreme fashionista wardrobe. It’s from the catwalk collection of a MA student at St Martins and allied with truly bonkers shoes. A friend has just described me as a bit like Elton John gone wrong but I feel this is in a good way. There is something wonderful about working with people who have such a strong vision.

When I first started working for camera I would worry about how I looked but now I am just happy for the hair, makeup & costume people to style me as they may, I don’t really even look at how I look. I now accept that I am looked at by the director, costume, makeup, DOP and continuity not for how ‘beautiful’ I may look but how I fit the character they need. I think that my increased bookings have reflected the fact that ‘I don’t care, I love it’ new attitude to being in front of the camera.

You can always tell people who aren’t used to being made up as they turn up with a full face of makeup which takes the makeup artist time to take off and then they stress about every bit of makeup and hair design that is applied. I have truly discovered the joy of sunglasses as I turn up on set looking like a exhausted tramp waiting for my Cinderella transformation. This morning I even had a mini facial massage by Naomi the makeup artist before she spent an hour applying 17 shades of cream and beige on my face 🙂 this natural look is always way more complicated than it looks.

But I digress, the details of the water shot, the kimono but with flashes of thigh each time we move, the constant attention to every blink if an eye; the joy of making music video is the 3 minutes tend to be far more perfectly coiffured than a short film where there is dialogue and emotions to be focused on.

There have been moments today I have felt like I was on America’s Next Top Model 😉 Trying to replicate bouncing the water out of the jug was pretty fun too.

I look forward to the finished result. Krista Papista the artist studied Art , performance & digital media and so this video is a great mix of artistic vision, choreography ( we have a fun dance routine yet to do!) and extreme fashion.

Theo Polyviou is directing it along with Krista, they are both from Cyprus.

The last music video I did was playing Brad’s mum in The Vamps ‘Can We Dance’ Video which is now at 23 Million YouTube views and charted at Number 2 in the Charts – you can only catch me in the last 30 seconds. I look a million miles away from that ‘yummy mummy’ look today – part Asian warrior, part fashionista, part bonkers’.http://youtu.be/TOegbnl0yZE