Seb, Yaniv and Seb

I had been to photo shoots before but nothing as lively and interesting as the one Marvin shot yesterday for the Sebastien Loeb Sports Line slated to come out at the end of this year. Present there were the two amigos: rally racing legend and Marvin ambassador Sébastien Loeb, and Marvin designer emeritus Sébastien Perret, who flew back from Italy to make the shooting. Surrounding our two stars were Yaniv and Chirly Ben Soussan who run the BENBEN creative ad agency, Jose Simko of Saachi & Saachi fame, Denis Hayoun of Diode Studios in Geneva, additional photographers, a host of assistants and helpers, Cécile Maye, CEO of Marvin, and yours truly.

My mission? Filming the stuff going on behind the scenes – a sort of “The Making of” project if you will. I shot a lot of video and pushed more real-time pictures to Facebook than ever before

In the middle of it all, I had Loeb sign a couple autographs for our

Sebastien Loeb Interviewed

Facebook fans, and then a horology journalist showed up and sat him down for a quick interview. But most of his time was spent crouching and kneeling on a reflective pad under the sounds and flashes of automatic photo fire. For one scene alone, Denis shot 263 stills! As you’ll see in the pictures, both Sebastiens were wearing pilot and pit-stop crew suits. You’ll understand why when the ads come out

Overall the routine was pretty consistent.

The Loeb Crouch

Step 1: dress up the guys
Step 2: Position them on the pad
Step 3: Angle lights and fans as needed
Step 4: Provide props
Step 5: Have them adjust position as needed
Step 6: Shoot pictures
Step 7: Get instant digital feedback from the computers
Step 8: Adjust as needed
Step 9: Shoot more picture
Step 10: Take a sushi break

That was pretty much it for eight hours. We won’t see the final results for a while of course, until the post-production people and graphic artists work their Photoshop and iMac magic. That and the official release of the Loeb Collection (September in Tokyo and November in Paris, France).

It was pretty delicate trying to shoot all the “behind the scenes” material without getting in everyone’s way but I think it worked out alright. We’ll soon be posting some video as well so stay tuned, and go sign up on the Loeb mailing list to get notified of all upcoming news and special offers instantly!