Who: Eric Doggett

Where: REAL Magazine

What: Shoot with Rob Thomas (the creator of the show Veronica Mars)

Watch a behind the scenes video and read what Eric Doggett had to say about the shoot below.

Rob Thomas Photo Shoot from Eric Doggett on Vimeo.

“Earlier this year, I was asked by the people at REAL Magazine if I would be interested in photographing Rob Thomas. “Whoa”, I thought. “Not that Rob Thomas,” I was quickly told. As it turns out, Austin has its very own Rob Thomas, and he’s the creator of the television show Veronica Mars (a show that I remembered my wife being fond of during its run from 2004-2007).

Rob decided that he wanted to turn Veronica Mars into a big, fancy movie. So, he came up with the idea of using Kickstarter to help fund the production, starting the campaign this past March. The original goal was to raise 2 million dollars, but by the end of April the project raised an amazing 5.7 million dollars, smashing through at least 5 Kickstarter records in the process.

REAL Magazine wanted to profile Rob and his success with the project, so I started sketching out ideas of what we could do. Rob was open to any kind of humor spin we wanted to put on the production, and I came up with an idea to have Rob running a lemonade stand, where he was selling props from the tv show to help fund the film. Who doesn’t remember having a lemonade stand when they were growing up? And thinking (if you were like me) that all you needed to do was sell a few cups and surely you’d have enough dough for a brand new toy.

We scouted out several locations around Austin and settled on a beautiful yellow house. It had a very neighborly charm to it and was the perfect fit for our lemonade stand scene. Rob brought along several personal items he he’d collected from the show to serve as our for-sale items. I also thought it would be funny if a kid was scootering by, acting indifferent to what was happening and going on about his day. This critical role was filled by my son, Trevor, who had no trouble scootering around as long as we needed him to. We also thought it would be funny to make the fundraising seem more dire for Rob by adding the Ferris-Bueller-inspired water tower in the background. You should always leave room for 1980’s film references in your photos.

After the main shoot was over, I took some individual shots of Rob that his public relations team could use for his promotion. This can be a great way to get additional money from a shoot to cover various things (like a behind-the-scenes video crew, which I used it for). Everything is pretty much as we shot it on location, although I did scale Rob and the table up a little bit, plus added the text onto the poster board.

This was my favorite shoot so far this year. It’s not often that you have a blank canvas staring at you for a client, and I was happy were able to turn it into a fun, memorable image!” – Eric Doggett