PRETTY CEOs
I stole the term “Pretty CEOs” from the Total Glam ladies. I hope you’ll enjoy this piece about my journey with them.
Firstly, this was supposed to be a 2-day shoot; 25 Jan – 26 Jan, but we managed to squeeze it all in one day, of course sacrifices had to be made, but we all worked together to achieve what we expected and I’d like to thank the team’s cooperation on this. The shoot wouldn’t have been a success, had everyone not brought their A game that Saturday morning. Lord knows I was already in a terrible mood when 5 PM hit, considering we wrapped up at 8.30 PM.
When I approached Zanele about the collaboration with Eckse, it was an easy decision as I’ve already worked with her before and we were both extremely happy with the end results, so this working relationship was already built on trust.
Content curation is the buzz these days - with social media driving our lifestyles - and my intention for this collaboration was for us to create as much content as possible for all parties involved to benefit, because everyone has a story to tell and something to sell.
Total Glam’s goal was to advertise their clothing line and hair collection, the models and the photographer’s goals were to obviously ramp up their portfolio and keep their social media platforms fresh with new content and I had many other goals for this photoshoot, too many to list and writing this blog post was one of them.
We had 3 weeks to plan this and we all had roles. Sive and Zanele (Owners of Total Glam) had to take care of the location, catering and wardrobe, they already had 3 different types of products with three different kinds of selling points being the dresses, the swimsuits and their hair collection. This had already broadened the shoot because each of these products had to have different scenes; a reason we had three weeks to plan and two days to shoot
Call time was at 7 AM, it was a rainy morning, a very slow Saturday morning, I mean who wants to get up at 5 AM and go do makeup for 7 people on a rainy Saturday? I was already in a terrible mood but as soon as I got to the location and I saw Zan and Sive with their Total Glam T-shirts, I got filled with so much excitement that I asked if we can shoot everything in one day. Of course, everyone looked at me like I was crazy, but as soon as I started explaining why it would be a good idea, everyone was on board.
Was it a good idea? YES and NO and I’ll explain why
Yes – Because I didn’t want to wake up on a Sunday morning and do makeup on 7 people again LOL
No – Because 1. everyone, the models, photographer, the makeup assistant Nomathemba, myself and the Total Glam team were extremely exhausted by the time we got to the headshots - the last portion of the shoot and the most important for me but we did manage to get a lot of good shots. But it could’ve been better.
- We had to sacrifice and kill time so the BTS video footage had to be scrapped in order to accommodate the headshots, remember this was supposed to be a “Total Glam x ELMEAU” collaboration, we were supposed to film a video simultaneously but it didn’t happen because we ran out of time.
We pretty much had a 13-hr working day with no breaks; everyone had to eat breakfast and lunch in 5-10min; the only time I was able to sit down was when I drove to the location and back home.
I’ve done a lot of shoots and one thing I do appreciate is that I get to learn and grow from each experience. I get to prepare ahead now and know that in order to get excellent results, you have to put in the work and the time and the budget, but overall I had the most exciting experience with everyone involved, especially Eckse. He’s very patient and kind, God bless his soul for not throwing in the towel, every time I opened my mouth disapproving of the shots. And I also want to thank Nomathemba for assisting me with makeup. There’s no way I would have done all 7 girls by myself. To the models: thank you Khanyi, Koki, Pearl & Nthabi, thank you for taking direction well and being absolute stars. And last, but not least, thanks to the Total Glam team for feeding us and providing us with high end quality products to show off.
This shoot wouldn’t have happened had none of you chipped in. Thank you for believing in Ever So Plush and ELMEAU.
Love,
Tobey Mbatha