Bright Star was a project that I had been wanting to shoot for some time, but the scale, cost and logistics meant it kept being put back. When I finally decided to do it, I was adamant that it was kept experimental and collaborative, and the only pre-conceived element was to be that the building and architecture lent itself to the form, feel and light in the images. I scoured the south of England trying to find a venue to hire and stumbled upon a suitably modernist-inspired house in Surrey (in the feel of Mies Van der Rohe's Edith Farnsworth House and Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye). Despite it being open-ended it was crucial that I brought in a stylist who would add another visual element and viewpoint to the project and for this, I collaborated with the stylist Emma Freemantle. Ahead of the shoot I gave Emma images of the building and the specific instructions that there was no requirement for this to be a fashion story, but to approach the styling in any way she wished, but perhaps more like a film (Jean Cocteau-ish perhaps). I selected five or six different areas of the building's interior and exterior for us to work against and we managed to do this over a very full and busy day. During shooting Emma told me she was reading John Keats (the poem Bright Star to be precise) and in keeping with the collaborative and experimental nature of the project, I kept this in mind as a title. With the flavours of Cocteau and Keats it was destined to be a cinemtic and dark romantic affair before I had even started to work on the images in post-production and as it turned out, Vivi played the perfect leading lady. Bright Star is split into two parts - the monochromatic Part 1 and also the colour Part 2.