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When it comes to putting portrait subjects at ease on a shoot, Alexandra Gavillet says, “Setting is everything.” She puts thought into DJ-ing the music on the shoot, for example, to set the mood. “The first song the talent hears when they walk in the room, before makeup or anything, has influence over the day and how the crew interacts with each other.”
Known for her high-concept environmental portraits, Gavillet likes to “create a world” on set that the talent “can live and play in.” On some of her favorite recent shoots, she says, “I’m very excited about the world we created through set design.” When she collaborates with a set designer, they share ideas inspired by the magazine article, the personality of the individual she is photographing, or a role an actor is known for. She reviews the designer’s sketches for the scenery in advance, but enjoys the surprise of arriving on set and seeing how the plan became reality. “And when you see the set with lights and styling and talent, it’s so exciting,” she adds.
For a recent shoot for The Hollywood Reporter’s cover on “The Queens of Comedy,” including Maya Rudolph, Tiffany Haddish, Natasha Lyonne, and Jane Fonda, Gavillet worked with set designer Lizzy Lang. Lang designed bright pink walls and rococo wallpaper panels, and arranged ornate furniture where the actresses posed for both individual portraits and a group shot for the magazine’s cover. Gavillet was delighted with the props, like an oversized red apple, that Lang created for the actresses to hold or play with. During her solo portrait shoot, Haddish decided to balance the apple on her head “and we were done—we had the picture,” Gavillet recalls.
Gavillet says photo editor Jennifer Laski encouraged the frivolity of the sets, props and colorful wardrobe. “She’s always saying: Let’s go further, let’s do something unexpected.”
For lighting, Gavillet likes “harsh flash, not very much shadow and high key,” she says. On The Hollywood Reporter shoot, her lighting setup emphasized the “bold and colorful” scene and also worked well on women of different ages and skin tones. “That light is good on everyone.
It hits the face super well.”
It hits the face super well.”
DIRECTING
To capture seven individual portraits and the complex group portrait that had to be done both vertically for the cover and horizontally for the story opener, Gavillet and her crew had to move quickly. She first showed the talent her image references and described the energy she was looking for. She let them the actors choose their props.
Experienced at performing in front of a camera, actors “are more open to experiment” than other portrait subjects, Gavillet notes. But even experienced performers want guidance. Having to direct Jane Fonda produced some “butterflies,” she admits, “until you realize: This is what they need. If you put people in front of the camera without telling them what to do, that’s terrible. They want to know what do I do, and say: How I can look my best?”
Gavillet’s friend and longtime digitech George Brooks was acting as the lighting director. To test the lights and plan the composition of the group shot, Gavillet pulled in her crew to act as stand-ins. When the crew looked “gorgeous,” Gavillet told them to get ready for the arrival of the talent in makeup and wardrobe.
A challenge in any group shot is making sure everyone is “on” and has their eyes open. As Gavillet moved around, she would count down “3, 2, 1” before snapping each photo. “I like everyone to know that they’re having their photo taken.”
LIGHTING
Gavillet wanted the large, bright pink background to be lit evenly, with no shadows or vignetting, but also wanted to use a high key light. She also wanted each detail of the actors’ clothes to read clearly in the shot.
For the key light, Brooks used a Fresnel modifier on a Profoto bi-tube. “We placed this light about 20 feet in the air a few feet to camera left,” he says. “This light spread across the large scene.”
Brooks also had the crew set up a 20×20 silk, and placed two Elinchrom Litemotive 75” Indirect Octaboxes so they were shining through the silk. Initially, “We tried them with the front diffusers, but decided that we wanted a slightly poppier look and decided to take them off and use the 20×20 silk as our only diffusion,” he says. “These created a nice, even fill light that didn’t feel too flat or soft for the look we were going for.”
Though the scene was already bright, Brooks decided to light the back wall separately. To do this, he rigged an Ultrabounce over the top of the set, and then bounced a head with a Magnum on it into the Ultrabounce. This extra light would make it easier for a retoucher to extend the background if needed, Brooks notes.
The lights were powered with Profoto Pro-10 packs. Brooks notes that the recycle times of the Pro-10 packs suit Gavillet’s fast-paced style of moving and shooting.
Gavillet wanted a slightly different feel to the individual portraits, with a shadow behind each actress. To accomplish that, she and Brooks chose one of her favorite lighting tricks, which mimics on-camera flash: having an assistant hold a Profoto head with a Magnum reflector directly over the camera. Because Gavillet likes to move around and shoot fast, the power pack needed constant adjustment. But Brooks notes, “after a bit of practice (and a little refresher on the inverse square law), our second assistant, Resa [Cole] was nailing power output for nearly every frame.”
Because of Gavillet’s preference for “poppy” light, she chose to use additional lighting when she photographed Trevor Noah for The Hollywood Reporter outdoors at noon on a slightly overcast day. On that shoot, the Magnum reflector looked “over lit,” so instead Brooks used a medium Photek umbrella, without the sock, on a mini boom placed above Noah, who was lying on the ground. The light was positioned at a 45-degree angle to the right of the camera. Gavillet notes, “I like that the green grass has this beautiful texture,” thanks to the addition of the extra light.
CAMERA
Gavillet typically shoots still assignments using a Canon 5D Mark IV, and for the group portrait of the actors, she chose a 50mm lens. “I’ve been into prime lenses lately,” she says, after switching from a 24-70mm. “There’s something beautiful about the way that primes capture everything clearly and the 50mm makes the face look beautiful.”
Gavillet rarely shoots with her camera locked on a tripod, she says. “It’s too difficult to be married to one spot. It’s the same when I’m directing video: I just want to run with the camera.”
POST PRODUCTION
She shot tethered, and her digital tech, Phoebe Solomon, previewed each shot in Capture One with Laski and the other editors nearby. Gavillet likes to keep the monitor far from the talent, and to review the take with them only during breaks in the shoot. That keeps the subjects’ minds “in the zone,” she says. “I say: I don’t want you to see the shots right now. Let’s just vibe together and then look together as a team.”
Gavillet often does initial color corrections on her own, either in Lightroom or, more recently, Capture One. Because color is so important to her work, she is “very hands on with this process,” Brooks notes. “I tend to encourage her to keep her color edits 10 to 20 percent less intense on set than I know she will want to do in post.” He notes, “She adds that 20 percent back in post so that she is delivering a final edit that is just how she wants it to look.”
She also works with retouchers in both Los Angeles and New York, who know she wants “natural looking” retouching. “When I look at faces that are painted over, I get this plastic taste in my mouth,” she says.
Her cover portrait appeared on newsstands in July. Gavillet was pleased with the work she did with “A list talent,” she says. “This is the shoot where my dad was like, OK, I see you.”
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