‘Downpour’
Installation film

Role - Creative / Art Director / Co-director

Produced by Studio BC

A 6 minute looping installation film made in collaboration with fine artist Maisie Broadhead.

17th century formal female portraiture was often a means for the elite to reveal the beauty of their daughters before marriage; designed to seduce the onlooker and allude to virtue, dowry and their social position. The pearl represented wealth, but also purity and chastity. This film realigns and subverts these visual cues.

To create the effect we rigged a few thousand imitation pearls to drop from a giant sieve-like contraption on to the sitting model bellow whilst shooting at 1000 fps. The effect of pearls hitting and rippling the skin in super slow-motion has an almost hypnotic effect.