Behind The Scenes: Welcome to Halloweenia

What does it take to create a whole new world for a photo shoot? A super spooky location, a lot of bodies (live ones, that is…), boxes full of props and ALL of the wigs.

Welcome to Halloweenia: the campaign shoot!

The first thing we needed was a location that we could not only transform into Halloweenia, but also capture the world’s spooky residents going about their daily lives – working their retail job, going to the movies, baking pies etc. The iconic Dracula’s Cabaret, a beloved theatre restaurant located about an hour away from us on the Gold Coast, was the obvious choice!

We’ve previously used Dracula’s to shoot a Museum campaign, focusing on the theatre itself. This time, it was all about embracing all the creepy backgrounds, props and scenes that helped us transform the space into Halloweenia.

Our three models Tamika (@tamika_fawcett), Aria (@ohllord) and Beth (@bethellenhurrell) were transformed into all kinds of characters inspired by classic horror stories, such as the Little Red Riding Hood, Big Bad Wolf and Nana, Wednesday and Morticia Addams, a gorilla, a cowboy, cannibalistic housewives and Miss Halloweenia.

Our own Eden and Claire took their starring roles again, playing the Big Bad Wolf and the gorilla and cowboy respectively!

Everyone totally embraced the dramatics of a BlackMilk Halloween shoot, getting so into their characters it was almost scary…

In these shots, Beth was actually falling off the ghost train – the horror was real!

With all of the crazy costume, hair and makeup changes, (including a frankly ridiculous number of wigs!) we had two makeup and hair artists, Alana (@alanamevissen) and Alarna (@alarnataylor_hair_mua) working their magic to constantly transform everyone into different Halloweenia citizens.

As always, Eden spent hours before the shoot itself crafting additional props and costumery to really make the world come to life. A 15-eye mask, anyone? It would be a great way to keep people from disturbing you while you sleep…

We also had this custom-made Miss Halloweenia sash, created by Laura from our graphics department. A truly unique BlackMilk piece!

That about wraps up shoot day, but we just wanted to leave you with a glimpse at the kind of editing work our photographer Phi often has to do after the shoot is done. The statues in the background of this scene are a little, um… inappropriate for our purposes.

So Phi had to work a little bit of post-production magic on the final images to give our cannibalistic, pie-baking housewives a backdrop that was a little more family-friendly (well, as family-friendly as cannibalistic pie-baking housewives can be!).

As always, our Halloween campaign was pretty much our favourite to put together – we had SO MUCH fun bringing Halloweenia to life! 

We hope you enjoy the journey there with us just as much…