While Warm Ups can feel time-consuming and sometimes met with eye rolls 🙄 from models, they are an important part in ensuring a successful shoot.
Primary benefits of Warm Ups
- Prevent physical injury (of crew and models)
- Enable models to get into wider stretches and more flexible poses during the shoot. Customers find svelte bodies appealing!
- For Solo, DIM, GG and GB shoots, Vocal Warm Ups help models get used to how they should talk on camera – for example, automatically adding in full details to the stories they reference.
- Help build rapport between models and crew. The Warm Up is a shared, slightly awkward process that everyone does together. It is usual (and fine) for there to be some laughter during the Warm Up and that can help with bonding.
Secondary benefits of Warm Ups
- A great source of Backstage images!
Full information about what is involved with Warm Ups and why is found in the Warm-Up SDLP.
It is never acceptable not to do any of Warm Ups, however there are circumstances when a reduced Warm Up is appropriate.
When is a reduced Warm Up appropriate?
- If the shoot day is running late before it has started, for example the model got lost on the way to the location so arrived late.
- If the model is particularly resistant, meaning a full Warm Up would negatively impacting her mood and the on set atmosphere
What a reduced Warm Up involves
An ideal reduced Warm Up won’t miss out any of the elements of a full Warm Up, they are simply Layered together to save time. For example;
Rather than completing a physical warm up then a vocal warm up the two are combined. In place of holding a stretch for x amount of time, models hold stretches for the length of time needed to quote a line of a tongue twister four times (eg ‘She sells sea shells on the seashore’).
Similarly the Purity Test can be done simultaneously with low cardio parts of the Physical Warm Up, such as held squats or arm, wrist and ankle rotations.
Reducing the warm up due to model-attitude
If a model is finding the Warm Up, ‘pointless’, ‘beneath them’ or ‘too embarrassing’, it can be reduced so long as the model has:
- Done enough of a Physical Warm Up to safe guard against injury eg basic stretches plus 10 seconds of cardio (in place of running the location stairs in full and doing a full list of stretches).
- Demonstrated to the SP that they understand the requirements to add in full details to all stories they share on camera and for Solo shoots, the need to put the SPs question within each answer they give.
A model either struggling with or having a poor attitude about the Warm Up is a Red-flag 🚩! In such situations SPs need to monitor the model carefully to ensure she is able to deliver what is required in the booked shoot. If she is not the SP must step in with appropriate direction and support and ultimately cancel the shoot if issues persist.