For the last 5 years, I’ve been working with The Cool Book, a prom dress catalog produced by the Top 50 Boutique Prom & Evening wear stores in the country. The unique thing about this catalog is that it is a compilation of some of the best dresses each year that are exclusive collections only available in the member stores. Over 1.5 million girls get the catalog each year.

Since I started working with them, we’ve been exploring new ways to use video to build excitement prior to the launch of their catalog each December. This year, in addition to a behind the scenes videos and television commercials, we chose to produce this little documentary with Lacy Russ (Miss America’s Outstanding Teen 2011) and the TOP 5 from the 2011 Miss High School America Pageant. The Cool Book and its stores are very involved in pageants as well, so it was a perfect fit.

We liked the simplicity of using limited B-Roll, and just letting the girls and their facial expressions speak for themselves. Some of the girls had already been to prom. Other girls were going into their senior year, but had already been to three proms. With Director of Photography, Bruce Gates, we interviewed the girls on their varied experiences. The interviews were shot in a sitting room at Greystone Hall in Akron, Ohio during the week that we shot this year’s catalog.

For those of you interested, the video was shot with the Canon 5D Mark II, audio was recorded to a separate HD camera. We edited the documentary in Final Cut Pro X. Music was provided by Triple Scoop Music. (More details in the credits).

About the author

Kevin Michael Reed
Kevin Michael Reed (Google+, Facebook) is a fashion & beauty photographer and producer/director based in New York City and Los Angeles, CA. He is the President/CEO of RedFOG Visual Media, a production company in New York City, and a partner in Passion of Photography, Inc, a company dedicated to teaching photographers and sharing our passion through charitable causes. Kevin has lectured and hosted workshops throughout the United States and the world teaching photographers the business and creative sides of photography. (Kevin's Fashion & Beauty Photography Portfolio can be seen here).