I recently did a WWII aviator concept shoot for a film in development.

The images feature actress Ina Kopp who is a prominent name in film and tv in parts of Europe, and is now making a move to the American scene. Wardrobe by Louis Verdad.

It was fun shooting at the air field with the classic planes and all the wind and smoke. We shot in an airplane hanger and out on the runway, but space was tight as both were crowded with other planes and equipment.

These are actual planes from the WWII era. The distressed one was underwater for 40 years — set designers couldn’t build that very easily.

Had to keep our footprint small, and be in and out quickly so used one power pack (Verso) with two or three heads off of it. Played with colored gels to create subtle mixed colors in the light. Wind machine, smoke machine, and two great assistants. All shot on Hasselblad 39 megapixel.

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Great article in the Wall St. Journal this week by the lead singer of the band “OK Go”. His assessment of the music industry is directly relevant to all media, and all creative professionals.

“We’re just moving out of the brief period, a flash in history’s pan, when an artist could expect to make a living selling records alone. For several decades… the recording industry managed to successfully and profitably pin it down to a stable, if circular, definition: Music was recordings of music. It was the perfect bottling of lightning: A powerful experience could be packaged in plastic and then bought and sold like any other commercial product.”

The same is true with movies, photography, magazines, you name it. Digital distribution, no longer constrained by the controls that can be placed on physical materials, has made the product intangible, easily replicable, and readily abundant. No more controlled packaging, no more commercial product (or a significantly reduced one).

The new path emerging is merchandising around the media, events, and of partnering with benefactors seeking something other than a direct financial return on the art/media. This last one is how art has work for most of history. Much like the model I recently discussed and am exploring for an ambitious art project, OK Go is finding brand sponsors for each of their well-defined creative projects — be it a music video, performance, or new CD.  Unlike the traditional financial backers of such efforts, the brand sponsors seek a marketing return, not a cash return on the investment.

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We’re ramping-up for the shoot with designer Anthony Franco that I posted about previously.

It’s going smoothly thanks to the team in place which includes not only Anthony, but also Francis overseeing casting, Geordy our brilliant master of all things audio, Lonny the master of digital infrastructure & workflow, JP helping with location scouting and visual effects planning (yes, a some fun effects planned), and Raymond who will be leading the editing with the two of us working closely on shaping the final form of the short film — I plan to be in the edit booth too, I love the film editing process (tinkerers like me can’t help it).

I cranked out the script with more speed than I expected, the concept came to me in three pieces over the course of a week at which point it just felt right. The team is pumped up about it, you can tell when the people around you are into a project — that makes such a difference.

This script is consistent with my style and tone in some respects, but in other ways a departure. I’m looking forward to it as a step into what I see as a new creative phase. Periodically there are clear changes in the vibe of my work, and I feel I’m at one of those points right now. I always feel when one of these transitions is coming on — it’s a mix of eagerness to move forward and break the old mold and some ambiguity in that I’m taking new risks by abandoning many of the methods and techniques that have served me well in the past. But this kind of performing without pre-established muscle memory is how we advance our work (and, in fact, ourselves).

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My ideas for personal shoots tend to get away from me. They always start out as ok, lets do something quick and fun and easy this time — instead of the full circus production my shoots tend to be. Then it snowballs and ends up this as complex elaborate thing. I can’t help myself. But that’s ok because I like the circus.

It used to be that magazines would fund big ambitious creative work, whether it was exploratory photojournalism or over-the-top fashion or whatever it is LaChapelle has been doing all these years. Then print entered its death spiral. But our ambitions for big passion projects never went away.

This decline in accessible financing is affecting all creative mediums: music labels have seen the collapse of their business model and are no longer putting the same money behind their artists. The more indie-oriented branches of film studios have mostly been shut down while the big movie studios have greatly reduced output and have almost abandoned original content creation. And grants for the arts are down with the government and corporations in fiscal hard times.

Amidst all this, perhaps because of all this, two new solutions are gaining momentum: crowdfunding and brand sponsorship. And while not easy to pull off, they each seem to offer benefits over the old regime when one does swing it.

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I met today with Anthony Franco, a top-tier celebrity stylist who up until a few years ago had his own designer label with collections at Fashion Week every season.

His collections were fantastic, but the demand for him as a celebrity and entertainment industry stylist exploded and he went in that direction — working for a roster of A-list stars that reads like a who’s who of Hollywood, and styling for studio films like “Catch Me If You Can”, “Star Trek”, “X-Men” and many more. He has also worked in the music industry as the stylist to artists ranging from Christina Aguilera to Outkast to the Pussycat Dolls to Leona Lewis and “Panic! at the Disco” — quite a range.

This year Anthony Franco is back with a new collection, and it’s extraordinary. I was at the runway show and it just floored the crowd. He called a few days later and said let’s shoot; I said absolutely. We’re planning on doing a short style-film and a small collection of dramatic images. Hoping to shoot in December, starting on pre-production today with the first priorities being concept development and location scouting.

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