The beauty queen's shot has the most alternates in this series, due to the difficulties I had to face which changed my vision for it. Initially, I was planning to take this shot in the room I ended up using for the airhead, but when I decided to bring the cheerleader indoors, I had to find a new location for the beauty queen. I had to improvise, because I already had the shot planned in my head, and I was counting on the mirror in that room, and the proper angles. Ultimately, I think the room I used was a better match, as it has more of a traditional 'bedroom' feeling, which suits the beauty queen changing her clothes - and I was happy for the opportunity to stick the killer in the closet (hiding in the closet, how iconic!). But the room was much more cramped, and it didn't have a large mirror. The original plan for the shot was to have the beauty queen holding up a dress in front of her body, while looking at herself in the mirror. The camera would be positioned behind her so that you could see her both from the front (through the mirror) with the dress, and also from the back, where you could see her underwear.
Basically, like this:
There were two problems. First, the mirror is pretty small, so it doesn't make much of an impression. But more importantly, it just didn't seem right to put the killer directly in the beauty queen's line of sight. So I ultimately decided against the series of shots I took with this setup. Here are the rest:
I shot these with the camera actually pointing into a smaller on-the-wall mirror, in order to get just a little bit more distance from the action, to improve the framing (a trick I like to sometimes use in really cramped spaces) - and that's what the odd foreground object on the left frame of the images is.
That's also why, in these behind-the-scenes videos, the room looks reversed (that's the way it actually is, the photos are all mirror-images). In the first one, I'm testing out the positions and some of the poses before going ahead and starting the shoot.
In the next video, you can actually see me controlling the camera by remote to take some of the shots from the second series. For that series, I decided to throw out the idea of using the mirror in the shot, and just put the beauty queen next to her wardrobe, facing away from where the killer would be hiding (and towards the camera). Since I already had the dress on, I decided to shoot while taking it off, with the expectation of just putting the shots in reverse to make it look like I was putting on the dress (although, in hindsight, it doesn't really matter whether the beauty queen was getting dressed or undressed).
Here are the rest of the shots from that series, omitting the second one which I chose for the main shot, featured above (can you recognize the poses from the video? ^^):
In this last video, you can see me playing the part of the killer, getting a little bit too familiar with the beauty queen's wardrobe. If you look closely, you can see my camera set up on the dresser, reflected in the edge of the mirror.
I also took some shots of the killer, just for fun, snooping around the beauty queen's bedroom before finally picking out his hiding spot behind the clothes and in the closet.
Fun trivia: By now, you might have guessed that the 'project' I mentioned in this outtake was none other than the Slumber Party Massacre!
Continue to Part 5: Smoking In The Boys' Room.
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