the nike spread 01

Concept & Art Direction Saru   

Photography & Digital Imaging Norman Tang/IFL STUDIO   

Styling Desmond Chok  
Hair & Make Up STEPHANIE/eiei entertainment   

Models ELVANNA RAINE, JOE FLIZZOW, MOOTS & JULIANA SOPHIE EVANS

This is a shoot done for Newman March issue. I had this idea for a year but didn't have the appropriate medium to output this concept. I've been tweaking it within a year, the angles, the lighting, the mood and how it should appear after its been printed. For Nike, their branding pretty much follows the tagline "Just Do It".

I envisioned several ideas that revolves around having illuminated buildings that formed the swoosh logo. So i had the models appear as urban parkour warriors traveling through cityscapes without a hint of fear, jumping through buildings and rails. Initially my idea was to have the models running through the path with colour spreading on grimmy and colorless buildings and walkways. Something like this:-

 

But the final output was such it wasn't cool or stylish enough, so i had the effect altered to smoke forming within the pair of shoes their wearing. The spread is done to promote Nike's running line anyways, so its only appropriate to focus more on the shoes. Also a concept like that wouldn't gel with the illuminated building concept. You can have an awesome DPS (double page spread) opener but if the following pages doesn't flow with the opener, it would be pretty pointless cramming everything into one spread. The final product is exactly the one you see here. 

I had total freedom on how I wanna do the shoot after weeks of discussion with the client. She was skeptical on how its gonna look like, if its gonna look cheesy or the spread wouldn't compliment the tagline. I myself wouldn't know how its gonna turn out. Of course you have the concept in your head, the details sorted, the feel of the spread, but bear in mind that the process of a shoot still goes through the photographer, the stylist, the makeup. Its not just a one man show. Certain times, the photographer may shoot the model at a different angle, which means your background should be angled correctly to suit the angle of the model. During that time, if what the photographer shoot turns out to be better than what you had in mind, then its time to improvise because things rarely happened the way you want it. What if the model can't pose they way you want her to? What if you cannot manage to find an appropriate image to superimposed to the background?

The shoot

It took us 3 days to shoot this. Before that I myself went to several locations. The first was to cover the illuminated building. Near Setapak, an old 19-floor apartment that houses all the foreign construction workers. I notice the lights on the corridor of the apartments never switches off during the night. If looked from afar, it resembles pixels. Perfect for my concept. Second place was some backlane in  Pudu, filled with junkies and society's washouts. Lastly, all the parking lots in within the Golden Triangle area. First day we covered just the building. It needs to be shot at night when all the lights are on. I'm thinking, how is the angle gonna affect the model. in the end we shot from the 15th floor to the 19th floor. Its just me and the photographer here. He took those images with high aperture and low aperture. Doing it enables him to superimpose of the lights off to form a swoosh logo on unwanted apartments within the swoosh logo. The whole ordeal took us from 7pm to 1am.

Second day, we went to Pudu. We need to capture several shots of construction sites and parking lots. This time we had an assistant with us to haul the equipment around KL. I remembered went we were walking around some back alley, we saw an opening through the construction gates. The area is filled with several slabs of unfinished pillars jutting out from the pond with steel bars on the end of each pillar, we thought thats gonna be cool if implemented on some of the buildings. The photographer was so enthusiasted he just shove his head along with his camera through the damn gates to shoot the pillars. What he didn't realized is that beside him, a stoned out junkie was squatting huddled up enjoying his high. I saw that and quickly drag the grapher out of the opening. As we walk along the backstreet, it amazes me that how come I hadn't been to this area before, within KL but so secluded from public. Everywhere is filled with junkies, all if them have that blank stare. Guess they're fuckin' stoned to high heaven to notice us invading their territory. They're just littered along the street, some with used mattresses stretched along the street for them to sleep on. We hurried on with the shots. By the time we're done it's already 5pm. 

Third day was done inside the studio. Nike decided that they gonna use their own ambassadors for their running line. We had Elvanna on 9am. She was already there at 8:30am! Talk about professionalism. She's now in that local comedy, Mr. Siao's Mandarin school or something. Couldn't be arse to watch the damn telly. But she is tighter than a muthaf.... First time I saw her was like, dayummmmmm gurllll...... me glad we got her for the shoot. The next one we got was Joe Flizzow. I was thinking that he's gonna come down the studio, getting all gangsta' on my ass, yo we keepin' it real, keep it on the lodown, ain't gonna be disrupting my flow yo.. with spit coming out the sides of his mouth like some rappers. But no air on Mr. Hotshit rapper. Guy's relaxed without a hint of cockiness. Saw me pass me his latest CD. Awesome.The last 2 was Moots and Sophie Evans. All are extremely cooperative with the shoot. Reason why we had to superimposed the background was that it's dangerous shooting in areas such as the ones i mentioned.

After the spreads been printed on the mag, everybody's happy. I'm glad everything turns out well, we've receive compliments from different clients for the shoot. But what they don't realized is that its a team effort. I didn't do it alone. Of course I was directing it all the while. But is a team effort. Of course I don't have the on-the-scene images to show cos' I'm too lazy to take them. And in all, it was a spread worth sweating for. I will update soon with other spreads that I've done. Cheers.