On the 7th of October, the principal cast of Sweeney Todd were taken to film the promotion video for the upcoming musical ‘Sweeney Todd’ performed at the Lowther Pavilion Theatre in January 2025. This took place at ‘Powells Pastries’ located in St Annes. As well as creating our promotional video we also had our in costume cast photos, these photos were taken by a professional photographer – Kelly Akers.
The purpose of the promo shoot was to help advertise and create content for the programme, an example of this us having our photos taken in costume and showcasing our relationships in the show with the other characters. Miss Worthington had created a storyline that would be showcased throughout our promotional video with the focus showing one character walking past all principal's parts on his way to the Sweeney’s ‘barbers' shop’ where he would meet his end... The promotion video involved all main characters in the musical, Sweeney Todd, Mrs Lovett, Johanna, Anthony, Tobias Ragg, Pirelli, The Begger Woman, Judge Turpin and Beadle.
My favourite moment of the promo shoot was when we walked to Starbucks in our break wearing a wig and a moustache!
Getting into hair and makeup was an interesting experience for me as I have never been a lead role before and learning how to create my character of a man with makeup was challenging. We started by changing into our costumes and then I make myself twenty years older, I had a guide to follow for makeup and lots of hep from friends!
I love being part of the musical as we all feel like a big community, so when we weren’t filming, we were chatting and getting to know each other and when we were filming it was a very organised experience. We would take advice from our teacher on how to become our characters and run through the shots a few times. Working with a professional photographer meant that everything was well thought through and we managed to find the perfect shot. We would take a few different photos trying different poses each time. Overall, I have had a lot of fun filming this promotion video and cannot wait to see the results!