Photo-Shoot for Moon Over Manhattan: Behind the Scenes - PART II

No Fantasy novel is complete without swords...or...well...maybe that's just in my opinion? :)

Again I open with a great pic of my leading lady with both her swords and the rest of her pack. In the book she is ambidextrous with her sword fighting skills, a family trait, which is why all pics of her character, Denika, and her brother, Demyan, have double swords. For example...







WELCOME TO PART II OF MY "BEHIND THE SCENES" BLOG...

So, where were we? Oh yes...we had changed location! We walked down West Drive from the castle to Umpire Rocks...loosing Jerome and Richard on the way in the mass of "Walk for the Cure" folks walking for Breast Cancer Awareness. While we waiting on them we decided on war paint for the rest of the primary cast and started getting them all done up.

We were on a time table. You see, two days before the shoot I find out one of my main pack members has to be at work at 2pm in SoHo. And I was like..."Crap! I can still make this work! (You see, when its an ensemble cast you miss one you really just can't do any group shots at all). Then, the night before the shoot another model emails me that he has to be gone by 12:30pm. Well...now I'm in a HUGE bind cause I can get group stuff done by 1pm but there is no way in hell I can do by 12:30pm. Luckily I called and spoke to him and he was able to move his leave time till 1pm and we got both gentlemen out and on their way in time but...it was mighty stressful, I won't lie.


Here are a few pics that Robbie took. First one is of Lauren done up as Denika down by the rocks at Umpire Rocks and then Orion (Cash) and Mark (Phin).



As soon as Richard and Jerome found us and we were done up in make-up we started with a few "boys only" pics (see below)...and then group photos by the rocks (see first pic of this blog entry).



My time was running out to have Phin and Liam there so I knew that one of the things for the website will be solo shots to go with character descriptions so I set up solo shots for Phin and then, because his character and Lexie are slowly becoming an item in the book we got a few pics with them as well.





After we did those we had to get one of Liam...and we decided to do an action shot of sorts...something to fit the character. We had him get set to attack someone coming around the corner. I think it fits him well. :)

Once we let the man playing Liam go it was around 1:30pm so I paid everyone to go take lunch, sending Lauren to fetch MY food whilst I went to fetch the secondary cast members...namely one of my "maybe or maybe not a bad guy" Shade. His pictures, along with those of Demyan will need to be altered in photo-shop due to eye color. We tried the colored contacts but they were not saturated enough ($30 each too...ouch) to show up in person let alone on camera so I will save all the pics of our "bad guys" or I suppose "could be bad guys" until those pictures are fixed up.

After our lunch break we were fighting the "light battle" as our daylight was dying fast...so we began to move with purpose. We did no only solo shots of the "bad guys" but a few with our heroine with her lover, Shade, and her brother, Demyan.


Now, do understand that the book is written in third person, but from two perspectives only...which was different for me since my first series (not saying Moon Over Manhattan will be a series, but it might, we'll see) comes from multiple perspectives. I wanted to challenge myself...see if I could do a whole story just from two. I'd planned on just one but you really can't "see" a character without seeing her from someone elses eyes--a woman never sees herself honestly, we're too hard on ourselves. So, in order to do that, I also write the book from Cash's perspective---how he sees her. They're partnership in this book is vital to the story and so was finding the right guy to portray him...and believe it or not, I found him working a wedding. LOL! Here is one of my favorite shots of Cash (aka Orion Talley). Look at that great tat work on his arms that Niki did! Just wonderful stuff!



While Vince was working with our fight choreographer and swordsman, Mark Rosenthal, I took a few snapshots of my cast sitting around...thought you'd like to see them. We have one of Amanda (Inari), one of my loverly make-up goddess Niki, Amanda (Inari) laying out with Tomer (Marlen), and of course, one of Lauren on break:









We finished up the day with solo shots of Denika with her swords (one of which opened Part I of this Behind the Scenes blog) and showing her wolf tat on her low back...



And finally pics of our Alpha and Beta together.

I leave you (for now) with one last group shot. Tune in next time for PART III of "Behind the Scenes of Moon Over Manhattan Photo Shoot" where I'll have my photos of the "bad guys" and my fantastic secondary cast of characters such as Rachel, Brush, Dmitri, Shade and more Demyan!

xo

Tamsin :)