Overview

A stop-frame fashion short featuring American model Melanie Gaydos, shot on location in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. Gaydos, whose ectodermal dysplasia has made her one of fashion’s most distinctive faces, plays a figure drawn into the spell of her own reflection in the mirrored corridors of a Manhattan hotel. It is reflection that ultimately replaces her.

Pre-production

The concept grew from the location itself. The hotel’s corridors had a hypnotic quality. Its banded carpet echoing the rhythm of each door, with full-length mirrors at both ends created an infinite regression. From that visual, I built a simple narrative: a girl who encounters her reflection and can’t look away, until the reflection becomes more real than she is.

Production

With permission from the hotel staff, I shot in a live environment with guests coming and going, parties in adjacent rooms. Working with a single LED to replicate the practical downlighters in the corridor, I kept the foreground lit while letting the background fall into natural shadow. The entire shoot was completed in around 45 minutes.

Post Production

There was a lyricism to Melanie’s movements in the stills that demanded to be animated, but not smoothly. I stuttered the playback deliberately. Some sequences run fluidly, others hesitate to evoke the uncanny quality of the reflection narrative. Frame rotations tilted the world off-balance, reinforcing the character’s disorientation.

Dylan Bell’s score went on to match the piece’s strangeness, and a tighter second cut was re-edited to lock more precisely to his sound design. The grade was built around the corridor’s amber practicals, pushing warmth into the midtones while keeping Melanie’s skin cool and otherworldly.