Aglaja Brix and Florian Maas’s new story, ‘Devil’s Dance’, stars a model named Natalie and take us into the studio for an experience that is hallucinatory, sexy-futuristic and a little unsettling – Natalie glows in different colours, casts unusual shadows, and even dissolves and solarises around the edges.
Why did you choose the title ‘Devil’s Dance’?
All the colours, the dance-like poses and our model’s strong gaze have something devilish about them, while the photographic effects and the crazy make-up and styling also bring something weird and bizarre into the story. So this title really came up very quickly.
What was the underlying idea behind this shoot?
For this story we really wanted to play around with the lighting and some different light-diffusing props. Everything else, such as the poses and the general mood, just developed in the process of the shoot.
What kind of music do you think the devil dances to?
Well, we listened to techno music while we were shooting. Does that work as an answer? But maybe the real devil listens to ‘schlager’ (corny German pop) music.
If you had to choose a soundtrack to this story, what would it be?
If we had to name one track … ‘Belly of the Beast’ by Gazelle Twin. The sound has something crazy and hard, perfect for dancing excessively to. At the same time the feminine voice gives a subtle erotic touch that we also see within the story.
This is your third digital feature with us and has a rather unique aesthetic look.
How did you make this one different from the others?
The most obvious difference is that this is entirely shot in the studio, whereas our other stories were at strong locations. With no backgrounds to play around with, a creative concept involving lights and effects becomes even more important to telling a compelling story. It was really fun shooting among friends with cool styles, coloured lights and loud music.
Can you tell us more about the model? Who is she?
Our model, Natalie, is a friend of ours: we had already shot with her a few times before. The first time we met was for a shoot we did two years ago in our studio. We quickly realised that she’s also originally from Hamburg and living in Berlin now. She’s half-German and half-Indonesian – that’s where her special look comes from.
What was your experience of working with the Leica SL on this shoot?
The Leica SL was great for this story because it works so well with low-light situations. Most of the images in this story were not shot with strobes but with continuous lights. To make that work, it’s very important to have a camera with high sensitivity and a fast and reliable auto-focus.
How is it different from shooting with the Leica S?
The Leica S also produces amazing images in low-light situations, so the biggest difference would be the SL’s multi-point auto-focus and the possibility of using the 24–90mm zoom lens, which is great for capturing different angles quickly as they come up. The systems are very similar in their handling: the SL is just a little lighter and faster and it’s great to work with the touchscreen.
This story has a lot of wild colours, motion blurs and double images. How did you achieve these effects? Were they in-camera or post-production?
Sure some colours were boosted in post-production, but all the effects you find in this story were captured at the moment of taking the photographs: we combined continuous lights with strobes using longer exposure times; we also used foils and other special props, and even painted her teeth. So most of what you see is ‘real’.
You’ve said before that you’re in love with Berlin. Who is your favourite artist from Berlin?
What we still like most about Berlin is its diversity and artistic style. Every part of the city can be so different and creative and, even after living here for a while now, we still frequently find new places that we didn’t know before. We can’t really name one Berlin artist who is our favourite, but in the spirit of this story we can say that we really like the Berlin electronic music scene. It’s the capital city of electronic music and we find inspiration in the work of artists like Len Faki or Marcel Dettmann. There are also many festivals and exhibitions that crossover between art, music and technology, and this is great because we think all these areas are more connected with each other than ever before. It feels like Berlin really is one of the leading cities in connecting these fields.
