Before & After: Cortana Shoot
My husband and I have started a tradition.
If you’re a “Parks and Recreation” fan like we are, you’ll understand what the phrase “treat yo-self” means. And our “treat yo-self” day is officially November 1st every year.
My husband, Erik, makes short films, and is always on the lookout for good deals on props. We also both love to cosplay as our favorite characters, which means we’re always searching for costume pieces as well. A day after Halloween this year, we happened to stumble into a local Halloween pop-up shop at the suggestion of a co-worker and our excitement and dreams instantly skyrocketed. Everything was at LEAST 50% off! We left that day with around $200 spent in costume accessories, costumes, and props – but saved $200 as well! We had so much fun and were so excited about the deals we got on everything that we declared as we were leaving that henceforth, November 1st shall be our “treat yo-self” day.
We normally don’t cosplay outside of Assassin’s Creed or Lord of the Rings, but the deals were just too good not to get a costume or two. I grew up playing the Halo franchise on the Xbox 360, and I’ve always kind of liked Cortana. This costume was really cheap, so we decided to get it and do a photoshoot and see what kind of cool graphics we could make (because when you are a photographer / graphic designer and a videographer, this is what you do for fun on a Friday night in your marriage).
Putting Together the Look
I ordered a couple of wigs and some facepaint off of Amazon to complete the costume. We also got some blue eyeliner just in case. I put the face paint on before I put on the costume or wigs. I purchased Snazaroo’s Pale Blue Face Paint for this exercise because it was cheap and it looked like the right color. It was surprisingly easy to put on. In some closeup photos of my face that are SOOC, you can see where I missed spots or where the paint highlights pores or imperfections on my face. But we knew that would be something we could easily fix in post.
I had lofty ideas for my makeup. The end result didn’t turn out like I wanted, but it wasn’t bad!
All that was left after that was to put the costume and wigs on. I purchased two wigs for this – one that was similar in style to Cortana’s actual hair – and one I just thought might look cool. At the time, I was again surprisingly pleased at the end result for the shorter one. However, looking back, I can definitely say that I favor the photos with the longer wig much more over the ones with the shorter wig. Perhaps because it’s long hair and similar to my hair style.
Being on the Other Side of the Camera
Obviously, I had to be on the other side of the camera for this one since I was the model. It was so much fun pretending to be someone else! Because I was pleased with the end result of the costume and felt like I looked good / attractive, I felt much more comfortable posing. I think Erik shot photos for about 1.5-2 hours. And this was AFTER I had shot photos of him in his costumes for a good 2-3 hours!
It was so much fun to edit the images. Erik is very talented with Photoshop despite being a videographer, officially 😉 I’ve included some of our photo manipulations.
I was definitely worried about pulling off Cortana. I have never worn a wig before, and I was nervous that I would look stupid. But in the end, it was great and buying the costume was totally worth it. I can’t wait to see what we get on next year’s “treat yo-self” day! If you would like to see more of our photoshop work, check out our cosplay with Ezio from Assassin’s Creed.
Xoxo
Lauren