Dracula Blog

Hello everyone! I’m excited to share some behind the scenes stories with you about our Dracula shoot. This project was somewhat last minute and was put together in about a month. The inspiration behind this shoot was Monster High’s release of their Dracula Skullector doll.

One afternoon, I was scrolling on Twitter and saw Monster High post a photo that immediately caught my attention. It was a picture of their Dracula doll, but she was holding up her cape while facing away, so I couldn’t see a lot of what was happening. Either way, I had to have her! The next day, we went out of town on a trip, and while we were gone, the doll was released and sold out within minutes. Having absolutely no idea the doll had even been released yet, I returned home and decided to see if she was available.

Now, it wouldn’t be a fun trip without someone getting sick, right? Well, that someone was me. While spending the day in bed trying to find someone with an extra Dracula doll, I had the idea of bringing her look to life. Once said doll was acquired, I spent the rest of the day planning out her look and how I could recreate her crown, which to me seemed like the biggest challenge.

The following day, I felt much better and began to get to work on her crown. At first, while sick in bed, I ordered a crown off of Amazon to use as a base. I didn’t feel satisfied with my choice, but wanted to get this project together somewhat quickly, so I could get back to the other things I had already planned for Halloween.

The crown arrived in the mail and just didn’t seem right. I decided to put it to rest for a bit and help Aurora clean her room. While cleaning with her, I found a headband that she got from Burger King years ago that honestly looked perfect (though it was yellow, and had Wonder Woman logo’s all over it). I had a vision and decided to trust my gut. Somehow, the yellow Burger King headband seemed like a better base for the crown, rather than what I had ordered (which wouldn’t have require sanding, painting, and being covered with fabric). I clearly prefer a challenge.

After getting permission from Aurora to use her headband, I got to work and met my next challenge, the bat wings. I do love the way the wings turned out, but it wasn’t until the third or fourth time that they came out perfectly. At first they were too big, then too short, then too wide. It was a huge relief to get this done and out of the way. Oddly enough, the crown I speak of is sitting next to me on my desk as I type this out.

Now on to the cape! Last year a brand I work with sent me a transparent cape with velvet spiderwebs all over it. I had intentions of shooting in this item last year, but became overwhelmed by the delays of last Halloween’s projects, so I never got around to it. Most things seem to work out perfectly, because the cape was exactly what I needed for my Dracula look! After trying 3 different black and red capes, I found the perfect match for the one with spiderwebs.

During the process of putting the costume together, I was also looking for the perfect location. Now of course a castle would have been the most ideal, but there was no time for getting an insurance policy in place, along with all of the other paperwork often required to coordinate and shoot at a location like that. With the timeframe of a month in mind, I had to be realistic so that I could get back to working on my much bigger projects.

Luckily, while looking around one day, I found a set that wasn’t too far from us. It had the right look and was available to shoot at on July 1st (which was my deadline for this project). We reached out to the owner of the property and got everything scheduled.

This wouldn’t be a project of mine if there weren’t a dozen complications along the way, but I’ll focus on the biggest one. The set did not allow an open flame or smoke of any kind, which wasn’t great for the fact that I had spent the past month searching for the perfect Dracula chamber stick, and now I couldn’t use it.

We reached out to the owner asking if we could please, please light one small candle. "It’s just one tiny flame and we’ll be careful!". The answer was a firm no, and with just two days away from July 1st, we had no time to look elsewhere, so I decided to get over it and move forward.

The time is now 4AM on July 1st, and I need to wake up and begin hair and makeup for our shoot later that day. Everything went pretty smoothly that morning and I was ready to go! No complications with my hair or makeup, no props left behind and forgotten at home. It was perfect!

We arrived on set and began to set up the lighting. A goal of mine for this shoot was to not only recreate the Monster High doll’s look, but to also pay homage to the one and only Bela Lugosi. I wanted to recreate some of his most iconic photos from the 1931 Dracula film, and had a short window of time to do so that day.

One of my favorite images from this set, called “Lugosi”, was the last photo we shot that day, and was, of course, the most chaotic haha! I was actually the person who technically took this photo, as I was holding a remote trigger to click the camera, while Brendan was using an old trick that I learned from a photographer while modeling about 8 or 9 years ago.

This trick was how we created the light that shines mostly on my eyes, which reminds me of one of my favorite Bela Lugosi photos. If you are unfamiliar with the photo I’m referencing, no worries, I’ve included it in the gallery I uploaded!

I had honestly forgotten about this trick until we were scrambling in the last few minutes trying to figure out how to create the perfect lighting. I noticed Brendan was using the remote to take most of the photos that day, and being that the cord had decent length to it and this was a closeup shot, I could easily take this photo myself while he created the lighting. We unfortunately did not have the proper tools with us as when I originally learned this trick, so what did we use? A shoebox.

The idea of creating this intentional lighting meant blocking most of it off, so that the light only shone on a particular area of my face, which is where the shoebox comes in to save the day. This, of course, was not how I learned the technique when I saw a photographer do this years ago with his fancy equipment, but hey, it worked! Brendan held the two pieces of the shoe box up the way I directed him to, and after a few shots, we nailed it! You don’t always need the fanciest of things to make something great. I think the Burger King crown also proves that, and I’m proud of the work that we did that day!

After nailing the last photo, the shoot was wrapped and it was time to go home. Once I consumed more caffeine, we stayed up late to watch Volume 2 of Stranger Things, which had been released that day. After days of rewatching, and *SPOILER* crying over Eddie’s death, it was time to take a look at what we had created that Friday.

Some of you may be wondering how there are clearly flames in two of the photos, when I previously stated that the owner of this studio had a strict policy and said we were not allowed. Well, it’s all thanks to Vanity Vamp. For those two photos from this set that include my chamber stick, we used flames from the candelabra in our Vanity shoot that we created in October of 2021.

I had the idea of cutting the flames out of some of her photos that we hadn’t used and placing them over the wick of the candle. With Brendan’s brilliant skills, he was able to adjust the lighting and also place little flames into my eyes to make it look legit. Though this technique wasn’t my first choice of how to create the look, we had to work with the circumstances we were given and go with it!

The last photo to be edited was the “Lugosi” photo, or as we should now refer to it, “shoebox self portrait”. Even though the lighting was insane for these photos in their raw form and already looked great, Brendan had to use his skills in Lightroom to make the lighting more dramatic than it originally appeared. This shoot, as well as all of our other shoots, are a team effort. I’m grateful that we can work together and use everything we’ve learned throughout the years to bring these looks to life!

Thank you guys for taking the time to read everything I wrote about this shoot. I’m going to go grab some coffee and get to work on our next project. I appreciate you guys and will be chatting with you soon!

Much love!
Angelica