Yazmin

We shot these in the studio towards the tail end of last year. Just by changing a few lights around you can completely change the mood of a picture. It's always great working with Yazmin, she knows how to work a camera and isn't afraid of goofing around.
I will be shooting the album artwork to Lord Lav's debut album Lord of the Dead at the start of february, we have all of our zombies lined up including Yazmin and a small group of friends and family so watch this space.

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The Red Carpet

In just over ten days we will be attending the cast and crew screening of Zombie Resurrection, so we will all finally get to see all of our hard work up on the silver screen. From the off the film has been a family affair, the zombie hordes (on two separate days) were made up of friends and family, including Andy (our director's) mum. My parents will be attending the premiere and even though I have thoroughly prepared them for the amount of swearing and lopped off body parts they will witness, deep down I know that nothing could really prepare them. The scariest film my mum will watch is What Lies Beneath, so it'll be interesting to see if she speaks to me again after the screening.

I will also have a display of a large bulk of the promo shots I took for the film including portraits of all the zombies who kindly gave up their evening to be covered in fake blood, so I will be able to take orders for prints if you are attending the showing. 

Lord Lav on set 

Pete Lumley and Lav

 

Lord of the Dead

Recently a few of us put our heads together to come up with a promotional video for Lord Lav.
The two main purposes of the video were to help Lav to crowd source funding for his debut album and also to introduce the character of Lord Lav.
Lord of the Dead is a zombie rap concept album intercut with audio scenes that run as a narrative throughout the album. If the funding campaign is successful the album will be pressed onto 12" vinyl and become a tangible collectable object for which I will be shooting the cover.
Between us we watched a lot of IndieGoGo videos, some great and some terrible to gauge what made a successful video. Our main concerns putting the video together were that it held peoples attention, was fun to watch, got the main points over as clearly as possible and that it was short enough that people wouldn't get bored whilst watching it (hopefully)
So ultimately here is the video. Let us know what you think and if you would like to contribute to Lav's campaign it currently live on IndieGoGo here

Lord of the Dead

So what did you do with your thursday night?
We spent last thursday shooting a Kickstarter campaign video for Lord Lav. For those of you who don't know what Kickstarter is, it's a website where you upload a video of yourself explaining a project you need funding for and offer perks that reflect the amounts people pledge, which are decided by yourself.

The original idea for the video was to have Lav sat in the studio telling you what he needed the money for, so we set the lights up and as always started talking. The conversation quickly turned to "you know what would make a really cool video"...
The title of the album is Lord of the Dead and is a concept album set in a world where zombies have taken over. Proclaiming himself as a newly found lord of the manor Lord Lav sets about living the life of luxury whilst society falls into ruins.

As a result of the conversation in the studio we scrapped the idea of a normal straight to camera piece and decided to set up a scene that would better reflect both the concept of the album and the humour Lav wanted to inject into the campaign.

Over the next three weeks we would scour charity shops and gather make up supplies and start to collect our zombie volunteers. Thursday night came around and everything fell into place. My sister and her boyfriend made up all of the zombies and everyone pitched in to distress their own clothes. Lana cut up her t-shirt with a pen knife whilst wearing it that turned out not to be such a great idea.
Gaz ate more than his share of red food colouring, Justin shot a time lapse of the whole thing and Lav kept us all in tea for the night.

We will be editing the video on monday with a view to getting it finished and uploaded by the end of the week, so keep checking back and I will be posting the link as soon as it's done.

A massive thanks to all of our zombies and to Jake for lending us his camera (and their instagram names to see more zombie pictures)


Emma - @emmaluckins
Gaz
Gemma
Jake - @jakeycboyo
Justin - @lightreflected
Lana
Laura -
Lex - @alexisshep
Yasmin - @yazmoogle

I have also been uploading a lot of the pictures to my instagram account @zomtographer

Welcome to the Darkslide

The clock is ticking down to my new exhibition. It has been over 4 years since my work was last exhibited, so if you're in the Southsea area during the first two weeks of August come down to Room 237 comic store and see my work first hand.

Here's one I made earlier

Shot this while working on the first episode of Lord Lav TV. In the upcoming episode Lav makes a drum machine out of everyday things you would find lying around the house.

You're scared of Room 237, ain't ya?

I've been measuring up the space at Room 237 Comic Store in Southsea for my upcoming exhibition at the end of July.
Here's a sneak peak at some of the new pieces of work that will be on show.
Remember to keep the date in your diary and I will send out more info nearer the time.

Smoking jacket

Another shot of Lord Lav from a few weeks back in honour of his birthday.

Rain Rain Rain

This started off as a "what are you doing this afternoon?" shoot, which turned into dodging out of the rain which in turn became "let's go get a fry up".

You will never see this man presenting a children's programme

Sunday afternoon impromptu shoot with Lord Lav.

I've also cobbled together a short behind the scenes video.

Keep checking back for more stills from the shoot.

Lord Lav

My friend Lav freestyle rapping on set. Lav came up to appear as a background zombie twice, the first time as part of the zombie horde and the second time to appear in one of the final shots of the film.
Check out his website for loads of great lessons on how to rap and how to create a song from start to finish.

My mediocre beat boxing can be heard in the background during the second part.

Enjoy