Christmas Campaign Shoot | Forever Unique

The Christmas campaign was the first big campaign process which I was heavily involved in from start to finish, collaborating with the rest of the creative team. One of my main responsibilities in the run-up to shoot day was researching into local venues, having been given a general moodboard and venue style to follow, and contacting them for prices and availability. This whole process was pretty complicated given the number of venues that I contacted, but keeping clear separate lists with information for each venue helped to keep the system organised. The process also included visiting our selected venue first to view for specific shoot locations so that we would be able to break the day into different 'looks' which consisted of three trends. In the days leading to the shoot, I worked closely with the campaign management team to ensure that the styles had been selected well in advance and of those styles selected, that we would have a high quantity for sale at the time that the Christmas campaign would later go live to the public. The garments were sourced in our warehouse and steamed by myself in the days leading to the shoot, then prepared in dress bags for transportation to the venue. On the day of the shoot I arrived early to meet the model, photographer and hair/make-up team as well as the rest of the Creative team to set up, which involved hanging garments into shoot order and laying out shoes, accessories and the styling kit. 

I was really enjoying the day up to this point, and it was my first taste of an off-site shoot since working as Stylist's assistant at Fabulous magazine. Sadly, however, my day ended abruptly as I was called back to complete some outstanding work. This day ultimately became the worst day that I spent at this placement, as I was wrongly blamed by high management for the incompletion of the work - I emphasise that this was wrongly done since the unrealistic deadline and total lack of communication across the wider team at the company was overlooked. To maintain my professionalism, I won't go into much more detail about what occurred! The most significant thing that came out of this was a new briefing system which was established by a member of management to be instigated immediately by all members of staff when setting myself and the rest of the Creative team any kind of task or assignment. This was the beginning of a much less stressful placement experience where my role became clearer and my time was being used somewhat more efficiently, given my new ability to be properly assigned tasks. While this new system did work to some extent, this still marked the first time (and not the last) that I cried on my way home from this particular placement and it remained tainted somehow; I never really felt 100% comfortable there again. After this, I really felt quite despondent with updating my Critical Journal with weekly entries so this is where they stop. Instead, I have gone on to update my journal with summary entries of each separate major project completed between September to November upon my time of leaving the placement.

Nevertheless, I am still extremely proud of the outcome of the Christmas Campaign shoot!