Carissa Mummified

Electrically insulated ... for her safety!

I will fully admit that I have mixed feelings when it comes to custom requests. On one hand you have to set aside your own projects to make time for customs. On the other hand you get a chance to deal with some interesting people with ideas that you normally wouldn't have though of yourself. That's the part that really intrigues me about customs. When you shoot regularly you get into a pattern of things that you know work well and can be done in a timely fashion. With a custom request however you can't do that. They force you to creatively break yourself out of your mold and try new things.

A wonderful fellow named Mike presented me with the opportunity to do a custom mummification. In my own work I hadn't done a full mummification for video only because they tend to be lengthy. Fans seems to want a mix of short and long clips but with the long clips being broken into 15-minute segments. There's just know way to do that with a mummification because I don't feel there is much of a market for people wanting to see 15 minutes of me wrapping tape around someones legs. I was very wrong.

Mike requested Carissa Montgomery which put me in a bit of a conundrum. I had never worked with her and only had four hours of time to shoot both my material and this custom. Because the client was just so pleasant to converse with I decided I'd do it. I ordered a lot of wide electrical tape, signed Carissa up for it and put aside the 60+ minutes necessary to get everything shot necessary for the custom.

I loved it! I've done a number of mummification sets and had forgotten how delightful it is to wrap someone completely up and then have them dependent totally on you. Poor Carissa at one point was wrapped head to toe in tape. Her ears were covered as well as her eyes and she pretty much only had her sense of smell remaining. She stood there without support with me next to her. I can't even imagine the thoughts going through her head. Then I put her on the ground and let her struggle. Well, she couldn't struggle so I let her wiggle a little and try to deal with the drool pooling in her mouth.

At the end she said it was hard as hell and fun as can be. She smiled broadly and blew a kiss to the camera still mummified. Yes, mummification sets will be much more frequent around the studio and yes Carissa will be brought back again and again and again ...

Image courtesy of Carissa Mummified in Electrical Tape with Carissa Montgomery!