Mad Max Fury Road opens in theaters world wide this May 15, 2015. The world looks mighty stylish for an age of apocalyptic adventure featuring characters in outlandish costumes. In fact, this is where the creativity bug bit me, and I scouted the local area for something that resembled the desert. When I couldn’t find what I was looking for, I figured a piece of undeveloped land right near the freeway would work just fine. My daughter and I shot this series for about 90 minutes, and it was a very neat experience to say the least.

Luckily for us, the day was not scorching hot like it appears in the film, and we had plenty of water to drink. The costume was essentially made from some old clothes she had in her closet. I embellished the outfit with some gorilla tape, and a few accessories purchased at the local good will store. You’d be surprised what you can find there, and it helps keeping costs down for wardrobe. I had a sniper’s vale, which worked out nicely as well, and some air soft guns that passed for the real thing. A majority of this stuff can be picked up at your local military surplus store.

The makeup was done using some of that Ben Nye black oil cream. I used it on the upper forehead and around the eyes to achieve that look Charlize Theron has for the character. I also put some of it around her neck and arms to give off that mechanic grease look. Combined with the sweat, it looks rather authentic to me. The hair was just tied back. My daughter did not feel like shaving her head for the role, so I compromised.

Beyond the hair/makeup/wardrobe, I had to use the tools of the trade to bring this series to life. I used two Profoto D1 monolights for the lighting, along with a Profoto Magnum reflector for the light modifier. When it comes to my camera, my favorite is the Nikon D800 with a 24-70mm lens. Of course there is no juice out in the desert, so I brought along the Profoto Batpac to power up my monolights. After we wrapped, I did shoot some aerials with the DJI Inspire 1 flying camera, all the while documenting the entire shoot with the GoPro Hero 4 Black.

Go see our artwork that we submitted for the Official Mad Max Fury Road Fan Art Contest. If we are lucky enough, we just might have a chance at winning. There are a lot of great fan art pieces in there, so the competition is pretty hard core!I’ll be selling signed limited 13×19 prints of certain shots on my square market store this month. You can also download the pdf for iBooks. I hope you enjoyed the photos, and the featurette on our YouTube channel. I definitely look forward to more creative shoots in the near future.