Upside down photoshoot!

I had a lovely time creating this artwork for magicians Jay and Joss. They’ve been performing magic shows for years, but this is their first play with more of a storyline — a family show about a gamer who gets trapped inside a computer game world run by AI, packed with illusions and escapology. I knew I wanted an action-packed image showing Jay and Joss in some sort of perilous situation, and I also wanted to show something impressive happening for real, rather than faked. I also wanted something really colourful - there's a temptation to go a bit TRON on this sort of thing, but this is a family show and I wanted it to be bright and fun.

After chatting through their plans for the show (no script yet — it was still early days), I started by sketching up some scamps to explore a few directions. These two were the favourites:

We decided to shoot both concepts, and brought fabulous photographer Matt Crockett on board. Jay and Joss have a storage unit full of gloriously over-the-top kit, including a custom-made crane mechanism they use in their acts — which meant we could actually suspend them properly rather than faking it. Here are some behind the scenes shots from the shoot at Holborn Studios:

We also shot a separate image of their legs tied together with a pale blue belt so I could hang them from a single string in the final artwork — always thinking ahead to the composite. The upside-down concept won in the end, but here’s the alternate version we tried too:

And finally, an end-of-day photo of all of us looking very pleased with ourselves. They were such lovely people to spend the day with — one of those shoots that reminded me how lucky I am that this is my job.