Feb 22, 20222 min read

The Cut x Euphoria

Sunday is for mass. Sunday is for Euphoria.

Let us all gather and relish on the day that is dedicated to the most significant cultural influence, Euphoria.

Sit down and settle in. We're breaking the fourth wall and taking you behind the scenes of New York Magazine's Special Issue of The Cut, featuring the 'girlies' of Euphoria.

Serving as set dressers for this editorial shoot, we played an active role in sourcing and styling the shoot's decor, including flooring, backdrops and furniture. In this post, we'll breakdown our curation process from purchase to installation.

PROJECT BREAKDOWN

STEP 1: Review the Pitch Deck

A pitch deck provides us with the client's vision for the project. This can include inspiration images, desired colors, and the overall look and feel they're aiming for in the final photography.

Shown here: initial concept image for the shoot.

STEP 2: Hit the town and start sourcing

Sourcing, in a nutshell, means we go to prop houses and retail shops to view their inventory, and place items that fit the client's vision on hold before presenting final selections to the client for review and approval.

After sifting through many vinyl flooring and carpet samples, we landed on two carpet colors for this shoot, a canary yellow and vivid burgundy.

STEP 3: Dress the set

After clearing the location space of its "real" furniture, we rolled out the yellow carpet and placed a single leather sofa. This area was dressed for the cast's group shot, which ultimately became the cover image for the shoot.

This striking mylar backdrop from Schmidli was very delicate, and required special care to avoid ripping while setting it up. The eye-catching texture added dimension to our next shots.

Fun Fact: finding 100 pomegranates is much harder than you would think! We sourced these day-of in grocery stores surrounding downtown Los Angeles.

We made a last minute decision to shoot on the floor, instead of the bed setup (shown far left). It's common in our line of work to have impromptu changes to the set decor.

While on set, real-time monitors are made available for the crew so they may preview the current shot or frame. This setup is important and very helpful to the team so they can assess and adjust any decor, lighting or talent as necessary. For this shoot, monitors contained mock or temporary graphics so the editorial team could gauge what the final cover art might look like.

THE FINAL SHOTS

Those images that made "The Cut"