GO LOCAL! Hair salon makes film showing challenges of hairdressing at a distance

How do you keep physical distance at a hair salon?

A Tauranga couple has answered that question in a light-hearted movie filmed in the backyard of their bubble.

Hair salons cannot operate in level 3 but can sell products online.

So Blow Hair Co co-owner Aarron Fenwick and his partner Kate Meads decided to make the movie while in isolation to keep connected with clients during lockdown.

The educational black and white film shows what hairdressing looks like at a social distance. It is set in Aarron's Backyard Salon and stars Fenwick as the hairstylist and Meads as the client.

She gets her hair coloured with a paint roller, washed with a water blaster at the make-do wheelbarrow basin and her hair blow-dried with a leaf blower.

"The leaf blower was the hardest to stay in character," Meads said.

"I just went into my happy place. I imagined I was in a moment of bliss at the hair salon having my head massaged."

The film was directed and edited by Brad Stent from a social distance and published on their Facebook page last week.

Aarron Fenwick and Kate Meads reenact a scene from their comedy video: Hairdressing from a distance. Photo / George Novak

Fenwick said the idea was to reach out to his clients while the salon was not able to open.

"I found myself getting into a bit of a hole. Every which way I looked as a hairdresser I couldn't see any out."

He said the future of hairdressing was uncertain.

"We still don't know if we are going to be back cutting hair in two weeks, we just don't know."

The salon was selling hair products online in level 3 but Fenwick said it was not going to keep them alive.

"It is keeping money coming in but it is minor. We need to be cutting hair."

To stay positive, Fenwick decided to call all of Blow Hair Co's 4000 clients.

• Covid19.govt.nz: The Government's official Covid-19 advisory website

But he joked after phoning the first customer he was on the phone for an hour and a half.

"I thought how do we reach out to our clients and say we are here and we care. We couldn't be with them but we want them to know we are doing everything we can to be with them again."

Meads said the movie took five days in total to make - a day to set up, two days to film and two days to edit.

"It was really good fun."