An Evening with the Two-Faced Twins

Usually, when you work with someone two-faced, it’s a daily headache of annoyance and irritation, and something you go home and complain to your spouse about. Not in Worthing though. Well, that’s if you get the chance to cross paths with the Two-Faced Twins.

Not one bit like a work-place nightmare, the Two-Faced Twins, Gemma and Stella, are West Sussex artists and, trust me when I say, you’d know their work if you’d seen it! Their style is really bold and striking and they’re taking West Sussex by storm.

The Client and the Brief:

This was actually my first encounter with the Two-Faced Twins, and it came about from a networking referral, as a fair few of my local gigs tend to (a constant massive shout out and thank you to everyone who networks and helps my business by mentioning and recommending me!).

The sisters got in touch with me in order to produce some video clips, Instagram stories, and to document an event for their five year anniversary. Which meant we were starting with a broad brief and a... dare I say... blank canvas (see what I did there?). They showed me a little bit of what they were after, based on my previous work that they’d seen and liked, and I did my own digging into their social media channels to get a sense of their style and what they might be aiming for. When working with new clients, it’s really important to me that I do this research and liaise with them about what they’ve done previously, what sort of thing attracts them, what sort of styles they have, etc. With such an open brief, I got back to them to ask for a starting point: give me an idea, give me what influences you. There’s a lot I can glean from my own research, but it’s always helpful to hear the client’s own language coming through – that in itself is as much a stylistic choice as anything else!

Personally, I love this stage of the relationship I form with clients – especially with other Creatives like myself. Bouncing ideas off of each other and building a good rapport pays off ten-fold on the actual shoot day, and builds a transparency and trust that I’m proud to build my brand on. Hopefully my clients feel that what they see is what they get – for now, it’s me – I am ‘mike b designs’ - and I’m the person they’ll be working with on the day, and all the way through from beginning to end. I like to think you can’t get much more consistent than that!

When you meet the twins and take a look at their work it’s obvious that their style is the driving force behind the brand, and it’s incredibly striking! The best way to describe their style, in a nutshell, might be... vintage but modern, art deco, and vibrant.

The sisters collaborate on the artwork, with Stella doing these seemingly simple yet incredibly intricate line designs – the drawing and the ink work – and Gemma is the colourist. And, if you’ve seen their work, I think you’ll agree with me that you couldn’t have one without the other – both aspects of the artwork are so key to the overall style and final product. Their distinctive skill sets MAKE the brand, ‘Two-Faced Twins’.

Gemma and Stella have focused on local landmarks and architecture for a really home-grown flavour and, if you know Worthing in West Sussex, then you’ll know that there are remnants of an iconic Art Deco skyline peppered along the promenade. The sisters have immortalised the Dome cinema and the Pier and they have even taken the time to celebrate other cornerstones of local cultural significance like The Bluebird Cafe (I have fond memories of fried egg sandwiches in there, and that’s obviously why it’s a local landmark) and – excitingly – their work has even found its way into Southlands Hospital! It makes me feel something warm and fuzzy to see other home-grown Worthing creatives make their mark in the wider world. It’s what we all aspire to do, myself included.

The Shoot:

This shoot felt very different from others I’ve done recently. For one thing, it was an evening shoot. For another, it was in an intimate gallery environment, and, lastly, it required me to be both videographer and photographer at the same time.

Now, the open brief could have left a videographer scratching their head, but, having spoken to Gemma and Stella, I was actually pleased to have some wiggle room to put my own stamp on the proceedings, and organise the shoot to my own creative vision. I’m definitely someone who can be left to my own devices (just as well, because my staff Christmas Do would have been very boring otherwise!)(Punch line: I have no staff. Have I ever mentioned that?!), which suited the sisters because this was their night and they needed to be able to enjoy it and fully immerse themselves in the event. They were busy signing artwork and chatting to punters and customers, not to mention launching three brand new pieces, this time featuring the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, Shoreham Airport, and the Saltdean Lido. So, not only was it important to make a feature of this launch, but I also wanted to help promote their art in all forms, including the other merchandise and smaller scale projects they also had available.

Elbows in...

One of the major technical difficulties was the tight environment, which was a blessing on the one hand, and an arse on the other! Celebrating and championing small local businesses means that I wanted to create the sense of hustle and bustle – the subliminal messaging with this is fairly obvious: you create a hype by suggesting a hype. And being in an intimate venue really does create hustle and bustle! The downside is, you then can’t move.

The venue space can really lead my creative direction on shoots, and it always come back to working from the specification. Some clients want the wide, sweeping, slow panning shots to imply space and openness. This needed to be the total opposite. My tactic here was to shoot through people (Don’t worry, it sounds far blood-thirstier than it actually was...!). I was finding avenues between people having conversations, capturing the artwork in the background or capturing people engaging with each other in a different way whilst looking over the shoulder of someone else, for a really intimate and interwoven approach. Essentially, the venue lent itself to this kind of candid and crowded aesthetic, and I leaned in to the idea of trying to fill up my frame as much as possible to make it look even busier.

The downside to all this was that niggling fact that I was donning the hats of both videographer and photographer that night, and swapping equipment proved to be a juggling act. Ever heard of the phrase ‘no room to swing a cat?’. It turns out that ‘swinging a camera’ takes up about the same amount of space.

As with a lot of my shoots – me being just one guy at this stage – it proved a challenge to make sure I was capturing all the important moments, even whilst juggling cameras. With only one pair of hands and one pair of eyes, ‘cake cutting moments’, as I like to call them, can have you breaking out in a sweat. What if I miss the ribbon cutting? Do I prioritise film or camera?

I got logical about my shots and the choice of equipment. For the unveiling of the works, I chose to roll with video because the focus was a motion – a movement, a flourish, and it was important to catch the live action, real time response. Also, film footage gives you the safety net of being able to select still frames from the reel. A majorly handy little trick! However, the artists standing next to their work and looking proud of themselves or humbled by the attention of the crowd would be better suited to photo – a simple moment that said it all without needing to say anything at all.

For the real ‘cake cutting’ moment – the ribbon cut – I had to try and catch that in both formats. This is where it really helps to liaise closely with the client in pre-production and build a good rapport with them, because if you end up needing to shout “don’t cut it yet, for God’s sake!” in a panic from the other side of the room, you might stand a chance of them listening to you and pausing while you hurry over! I jest, of course. But there’s a real dance that can play out in the run-up to the ‘cake cutting’ moments if you and your subject know what you’re doing – moments to pause, moments to pose; time to get your ducks in a row and your shot lined up before you actually go through with the grand ceremony of cutting/unveiling/dropping/launching (insert dynamic verb here!). When you stop and think about it, cutting a ribbon can be a really flat and fleeting moment. The magic of the storytelling is actually all in the anticipation, the audience engagement, and the response afterwards. All things considered, the ribbon is the last thing you need to think about really showcasing. Ironic, eh?

Tech Time

Another technical difficulty on this evening shoot was the low lighting, which turned into LED / fluorescent lighting as the night drew in. With this, you can get the splitting of the red, the green, and the blue diodes... alongside refresh rate fun... Basically, have you ever tried to take a slow-mo of your kitchen lights or TV screen? It’s the way the light flickers through the colours / breaks up the image.

Still awake? More Tech Time...

In home LED lighting when the refresh rate of the light is lower than that of your cameras shutter speed, that then cuts out some of that cycle. You might get a pink image or you might get a green image or a slightly blue image because of which section of the LED the camera's picked up (Did you follow all that? Because I almost didn’t).

Back to the studio...

 So, in other technical news, I also wanted to be able to zoom out to get wide shots and zoom in enough to get the tight shots, which is absolutely fine when you've got two cameras on the same job (aka, two for photography, and two for video). But - obviously – I had two cameras needing the same technical consideration doing wide shots and then zoom shots but they were working for different purposes. (As I said, Juggling cameras.)

Of course, I can quickly flip it, change all the settings and change all of the ways the camera is creating the file, it's just you run the risk of missing a moment, particularly on those moments where people are just enjoying themselves or clinking glasses - those cheers moments, those one-offs - you'll miss them if you're using one camera in two capacities and trying to faff around with your settings, so it's definitely better to have two cameras, one for video, one for photography. Also, I’m not a great fan of running around flashing people in low light settings (with the camera, get your mind out the gutter) because I feel it breaks the mood. It takes everyone's attention away from what's going on and suddenly someone's very aware that there's a photographer in the room, which is the usually the last thing these kind of events need! Especially when there’s gorgeous artwork to look at instead of my mug.

The Impact:

Feedback from this event and for the video has been really positive. The client really shone, and I think that was in part to do with the creative decision I made to whip around and capture in-person testimonials to add to the already glowing and exciting atmosphere. I was interested in hearing about why people connected to the Twins’ artwork, and ended up hearing some really lovely, personal stories. Some of them had got married at the Dome, and so that piece held real significance for them. Some of them had grandparents who were engineers at Shoreham Airport, and so that piece helped to keep the memories alive and immortalise their family history.

The Twins have really tapped into the potential of art and local culture, realising the importance of nostalgia, storytelling, and the emotive impact upon their customers. Art can obviously exist just for Art’s sake, but it feels like Gemma and Stella hold a brand that does so much more, and actually gives something back to their consumers.

At the end of the day, I felt proud to help put these two amazing female artists on the map, and to support other Worthing creatives like myself. It felt like we were a hometown team, representing so much more than just ourselves and our individual businesses.

The video celebrating the Twins’ five year anniversary is on YouTube, it’s on their website, it’s on my website – it's everywhere! It’s taking over the world! Go and check it out, and – the next time you’re talking a stroll down the prom in sunny Worthing, go and find the cute little Two Faced Twins gallery down at the bottom of Steyne Gardens. They’re well on their way to becoming the next local landmark themselves!