I brought Margot into Playboy as a Playmate in 2020. We've known each other for a long time and it made it easier to work together. I knew how I wanted to portray her. Definitely a bit sexualized, but without coming across as cheap. I think I found a good middle ground.
How do you light a series that is set in a dark pinball hall? The best way is to use the existing light, I thought. I hadn't considered that the refresh rate of the old screens would sometimes cause streaks in my photos. As a result, I had a lot of unusable pictures when selecting the photos later.
I used my Molus G60 continuous light as an additional light source. Only with a few percent strength. That was completely sufficient. I photographed with ISO 1600 to ISO 6400 and exposure times of around 1/40s and 1/60s.
For some shots I used a mist spray to make the atmosphere look more seductive.
As a child, I loved playing the car racing game Outrun on my PC. Of course, I didn't have such a cool machine as in the museum. But it brought back old memories as Margot was driving the Ferrari Testarossa Spider (which never made it to series production, by the way) through California.
The background noise in an arcade like that is enormous. We were alone at the shoot — Reiner opened the museum for us and looked after us lovingly. In other words, all the machines were switched on especially for us. It was very exciting when they all slowly started up and it began to glow everywhere and the many computer melodies blended together. Like I said, it was extremely loud.
I have sometimes written about inspiration and brainstorming in my blog. It helps me enormously to have an idea book and to sort my thoughts. I never recreate what I've collected 1:1, but first and foremost it means that I feed my brain with visual ideas. At some point, my own picture emerges from this.
For the motif with Margot on the motorcycle, I was obviously inspired by the movie Career Opportunities. More precisely, from this scene:
I would have loved to spend more time in this museum myself. There was just so much to see. In the end I didn't even have time to play a game myself.
After 3 hours I had my pictures in the box and now there is a lot to discover for you.
