After deciding my story, a murder scene, I went after the clothes: a dead body with black clothes and colourful shoes, tights and no face. Three outfits for three different parts of the kill. A murder, just the legs, colourful shoes and a murder weapon. Three in this case: A knife, a shoe and a piece of wood stick. Initially I thought about putting fake blood or even just drops of it,but one of my tutors suggested me it could look to trashy and that less is more and I should be careful. He said Bourdin tried to use it once and not even him could make it look good. Point taken. So I took off the fake blood idea and decided to only have the weapons without blood and just suggest the idea of murder.
I wanted two colours to pop up, red and yellow and maybe blue. Just like i've seen in the first picture. My initial thought was to put a red background and a carpet. Very bright red and just a simple carpet. To have more inspiration I went back to exhibition to see if I could find something to help me, and I also went to the Viviane Sassen exhibition at The Photographer's Gallery, I heard her photos were quite surreal so I went there for more inspiration. From the Bourdin's exhibit I realised that in some of the pictures, the colours were not so obvious, they pop up by themselves and there is not much effort. The ambiance is also simple and speak for itself. That made me think if my over the top colours were too over the top. So I could, instead of using a really bright red background, use a pale "house" background, a normal house with a carpet and a normal wall. Just like in Newton's picture. But didn't want to go too much into Newton, because Bourdin was the one I had to look at. Talking to one my tutors he showed me how much I was worrying over something I didn't have to, he looked at Bourdin's images with me and over and over the locations were simple and the secret is that he played with it well, and he suggested me to do the same. To find a place "normal", for example, inside a house. I knew I had a space in my own house that resembled that same room from Newton's. So I gave up on the idea of bright red/yellow/blue background and instead I was going to use the colours of the objects to pop up on their on. I could use the shoes, her nails or even the clothes or a piece of furniture placed strategically in a corner. I was going to use my imagination.
I had to be sure I-D would be good for it, so I researched a couple of old issues I could find and saw the same bright colourful make-up over and over. I also found this "simple location - powerful image" scheme in loads of issues. So I kept my initial idea of using I-D. Had to check now the clothes and how they would fit in the shoot and in the magazine.
So now, it was just get a model, a photographer and shoot. I got a photographer and a model and because I work during the weekends I couldn't do it so it had to be during the week. I would need a light as well, so make the shadow effect, which reminded me of Hitchcock. I even thought about having the shadow of the shoes on the wall.