Behind the scenes of the movie Window Shopping

"The concept of Window Shopping came about from a sustainability perspective in fashion communication. We wanted to shift the focus to an approach to fashion and launch window shopping as a new form of entertainment and a cultural experience," says Måns Peterson, who has developed concepts and communication together with Adam Siversen Ljung, Anna Knutsson, Felix Scheynius, Hanna Green Youngblood and Julius Tuvenvall.

Premiere at Copenhagen Fashion Week 

The concept premiered during an event at Copenhagen Fashion Week and was also shown in a fashion show at the Nordic Museum. In addition, a release party for the film was held at Penny &. Bill at the end of January.

The course is one of the most comprehensive on the Visual Communication programme. The students' task is to create concepts and communication for the Fashion Collaboration project, which is also a collaboration with the final-year students at Mode. It is an exercise in art direction, content and aesthetic expression but also in leading and running a project in collaboration with other students. 

"The setup was very free and since none of us really had experience of working with film, we decided early on that this was what we wanted to invest in. We had some basic knowledge, but to set candles, get cameras, forks, b-photo, post production, etc., we hardly knew what it was.

Money and local crisis 

Pretty soon they also realized that the camera equipment needed was extremely expensive to rent and the project suffered an acute money crisis. The small budget included shall cover all possible expenses. 

"We simply needed sponsorship so we made unique presentations to all advertising agencies in Stockholm and eventually received grants from 15 so we could rent the camera equipment we needed.
Then the next acute problem arose, finding a room with a pane of glass in December. The concept was based on the glass pane and the reflections that arise there. 

-We got in touch with 100 different places but since it was before Christmas, everyone was needed for Christmas signs.
At the last moment they found a room on Grev Turegatan, around the corner from the school. Despite the proximity, a whole truck was needed when the equipment was going there – among other things, an entire motorcycle was included in the set design.

Filming with meticulous planning and unexpected challenges 

"For the film, we enlisted the help of choreographer Filippa Fahlin, who helped us with kinetic energy, i.e. how the models would interact with each other. The fashion students all had different inputs into sustainability in their collections and from that we came up with different movements and what each scene would look like.

On the day of the recording itself, almost 50 people stood up and worked; models, designers, husband and hair, choreographer, filmmaker, photographer and students. 

"In parallel with the filming, there was also shooting for the lookbook and the models practicing their choreography, which required meticulous planning from us. Even though there were six of us working on the different parts, we really needed to be more to get everything together on the day of the recording.  

Shooting and filming behind a large pane of glass also turned out to pose several unexpected challenges, such as removing the camera's clicking sound, making it surprisingly difficult to communicate despite walkie-talkies. And it got incredibly hot with all the lights so the models couldn't stay very long in the light. 

"The project as a whole has been incredibly educational and fun, it's really the process that resulted. What surprised us was that there was so much project management, almost a month full-time of calling around, Googling, creating excel sheets... In the end, we managed to fend off the money shortage and difficulty with local, but lessons that we take with us include not trusting luck but double checking everything and having a plan B and a plan C in store.

HERE YOU CAN SEE THE FINISHED FILM.

Course coordinator: Brita Lindvall Leitman, Senior Lecturer in Visual Communication
Supervisor: Lisa Ehlin and Minna Sakaria