Poster Boys Gatiss & Flynn Act Up in the West End

A lovely commission to shoot the poster & portraits for the West End transfer of The Motive and The Cue starring Mark Gatiss, Johnny Flynn & Tuppence Middleton.

Transferring from a hit National Theatre run, The Motive and The Cue – from writer Jack Thorne & director Sam Mendes’ Neal Street Productions – explores the meeting of acting greats Richard Burton, John Gielgud & Elizabeth Taylor, through the prism of rehearsals for their acclaimed Hamlet.

Poster Boys

For the transfer, Scott Skelton & the NT team, working with AKA, asked me to shoot the poster imagery with Johnny Flynn (Burton) & Mark Gatiss (Gielgud) & portraits of the central trio in character & costume, with Tuppence Middleton as Taylor.

With a narrow shoot 1.5 hr shoot window & a small room at the theatre to shoot in, the poster imagery, which had been based on contemporary 60s rehearsal photography, was relatively straightforward to recreate.

Click the images below to compare and contrast.

60s Portrait Vibes

The portraits needed a theme, so I chose to shoot in a contemporaneous style, echoing both earlier High Hollywood portraiture & the 60s styles that followed.  See the moodboards below for some contemporary shots of the actors that we used as reference points & to explain the concepts.

In about 10 minutes with each actor, we got the images we needed shooting with super-shallow depth of field & very directional light.

A careful B&W edit with plenty of grain helped finish the images.

The pleasure of working with actors on a transfer is that they are deep in their characters, so what might be uncomfortable months before a show even starts rehearsals, becomes a game of easy expression & exploration.

BTS & In Print

Shoot Team

Art direction: me, @benpinwill & @nsbjj_keef at AKA
Hair, makeup/ costume: show team led by @georgia_nosal_wham
Assistant/digi: @emmapottinger
Edit: poster: AKA, portraits: me.

Backdrop by @hapacastudio