Fashion Victims

(Excerpt from spread)

January 14 20xx

I had reached an impasse for my art. There was nothing new under the sun for my photographic eye for life had revealed its baseness to me and I was unimpressed. Until last night. Last night, the sky was a starlit canvas and I rediscovered vigour for my craft. A man I recognise. He is a kindred artist. He committed a heinous act that made me retch but upon reflection I saw only exquisite work. He ended her in a stairwell where I lived. I captured his art through my art. I cannot express how I feel but through my lens. I feel renewed.

Concept & Art Direction SARU
Words David Chin
Photography FAI/IFL STUDIO
Digital Imaging Norman Tang/IFL STUDIO
Styling Daniel Henry
Hair Scott Ong/Homme Salon
Make-Up Ellisan Tan
Models Marina V, Paulo O/Andrews Models .

This shoot is done within a day. Normally, fashion spreads only lasted for roughly 4-5 hours including makeup. But for this spread, alot of props were used. AWAS cones, warning tapes, knifes and so on. It took us 8 hours to finish the damn shoot as it was raining already and we weren't able to continue the shoot outdoors, so everything had to be done indoors. The rest was photoshopped. We had every reason to fail as most of the shots needed to be done outdoors. Even I need to be in the shoot as well as we only booked 2 models for the shoot.

(Excerpt from spread)

May 3 20xx

I had obsessed over my masterpiece for months and I was insatiable. I needed more. This recognisable man had ignited more than just passion for my work, he sparked a dark desire I could not suppress. I met him again and I followed him. And Joy! He did it again! He cradled her into his car and brought her to her final resting place. He squeezed her tightly, delicately, and she was no more. I cannot congratulate him enough, but he does not know I follow him. I captured the act from afar without his knowledge and yet I ache to reveal myself to him. To thank him for his work that informs my work. Perhaps I will get a gallery exhibition with this series.

I wanted to create an interesting fashion spread with a storyline. Its always me coming up with a concept thats so damn fuckin difficult to pull off, which gives us a huge loophole to ruin the whole damn shoot. I had the storyline nailed down since several months ago, under the influence of too much damn Dexter drama-bingeing. Major assistance came from David Chin for the text, as I had him writing à la Edgar Allan Poe style. Dark and poetry-like. Fucker's a master with words. Like butter in my fuckin' mouth yo'.

(Excerpt from spread)

July 12 20xx

It seems I am not the only one who stalks my recognisable man. There is a detective. A capable one who is close to this man now. So close my recognisable man should feel his breath on his neck. I discovered this detective on the third instalment of my admired artist’s masterpiece. A man this time. Foolish enough to be so cavalier as to traverse in darkness unescorted. My recognisable man quickly escorted our fool to the world to come. This time my camera was without film and when I returned to immortalise his work, I found the detective. This time, I risked everything to take my photograph and I succeeded in this. I wish my recognisable man luck.

We were discussing with the editorial team on how we would structure the whole storyline since we had so many restrictions with the KDN (Malaysian Publishing of Ministry of Home Affairs and Internal Security, check here for the restrictions, one would almost give up on starting a magazine), initially we went for the story where the killer manages to escape. but after several discussions, we played it safe and decided to structure it with the killer writing his journal in prison. Not the best decision but a safe one.

(Excerpt from spread)

August 30 20xx

He was caught! I was devastated as I watched my recognisable man led away by the police to a waiting cell and in time, a waiting noose. I could not bear the end of his and my work. Night after sleepless night, I could not imagine this masterpiece of mine incomplete. But I finally finished it. The urge bubbled within me, so I stalked a young couple to a nearby park. And with two swift unsuspecting blows, they passed on. My work was complete. Then they came for me that night. I am not as skilled as my recognisable man at deeds such as this. My doctor tells me that I am unwell, but I feel liberated even though I see life through bars. He does not understand that my work is for posterity. Future generations will gaze upon my work and finally, my artistic genius will be appreciated.

In the end, I wasn't very satisfied with the last shot. Its fake as fuck. Its supposed to be shot directly from the top to create visual impact, it is, the ending after all. In any spread the first and the last shot creates the most lasting impression. This is a good concept wasted because of one defective image. We learn from it, but such a waste of concept.


the lengthy version

Nike Spread 02

Nike was impressed with the first shoot that I did. Then they decided to do another one for the ACG line just for Newman magazine. I went to sneakerfreaker.com to search for any info regarding the line. It was very comprehensive cos' they also cover the interviews from the makers, its origins and how you can utilize your kicks.
So for whatever info you need regarding sneakers, they're your hookup. Initially I was told the ACG line was designed solely for water use. I remembered seeing some optical illusion way back when I was working for AirAsia but was unable to implement the idea. They weren't that keen on exploring and pushing design ideas for the magazine. It needs to be safe, as long as the text is readable and design is so-so. Blehh.. This is the image that I planned to use for the idea. The digital artist from the studio and I spent hours discussing and drawing the pattern to experiment how to slip this inside the fashion spread.

• To make it transparent in the background cannot work cos' its not obvious enough.
• To use the pattern and alter the objects to leaves would require too much time and work. Not favorable to magazine dateline
• To switch the patterns to fishes would require us to shoot fishes separately in different angles.In the end, 2 factors stopped us from executing it, the rights for the wave pattern, which is from this japanese professor. His website is here, with more optical illusion to zone out to. And also the ACG line is not solely for water use. I was quite persistent to use the water effect. So I came up with another idea to shoot the models underwater just to get the lighting that forms only when you are underwater. We have Azwin Andy, good-looking muthafucker and all-time undisputed state swimmer from the band called Estranged, Raoul from One Buck Short, Arafah a.k.a Arabyrd and also Zher Peen, NTV7 host. It doesn't help that this spread is rushed out from the start, the studio doesn't have the camera housing, we have a budget to adhere to so we can't rent scuba equipment and also the apparels came in later than expected. So the dateline for this shoot is pulled all the way back to end of month. In the end, we rent the entire Bukit Jalil olympic size pool stadium from 7pm to 7am. And even that we had to negotiate the timing and the availability in order not to compromise the olympic swimmers training. Fucktards. We start shooting with Andy, pure logic and common sense, since the guy is a state swimmer. He was very versatile as expected, doing poses that we set for him. But it is Arafah that really surprised me with her agile and flexible poses underwater. Its fuckin America's Next Top Model shit in freakin Bukit Jalil! I think she did over 100+ poses. We knew how difficult it is to pose and breathe underwater but she managed to pull it off beautifully, between intervals of course. We had 3 assistant underwater on standby just incase shit happens. Its 18 feet deep by the way. The photographer and I stood by a small plastic window that is built underwater so we can shoot without being in the pool. Yeah, its damn easy for you, chillax-ing in the dry cubicle so the rest have to work their asses of underwater. Fuckin wrong wei. I had to run up and down, to the pool and below the pool just to direct the models to pose. Imagine there's 4 models doing over 300+ poses, how many times do i need to run up and down the stairs to tell them how to pose? They not exactly trained models. Just ambassadors for Nike's ACG line that are going the whole nine yards just to get the shoot done. Kudos to them, I say. After the shit I put them through, he he he he...... We finish the shoot by 4am. Even the client were there for support all the way. The beer gut that I had? All gone and toned by the end of the night.

We insist they put on goggles to see where they're heading or the directions they have to swim to, for the lighting above to cover them. The second day was done with the same clothes and poses that we initially chose. Just this time we superimposed the faces with the body shots in the pool. We had the makeup artist to imitate sea life patterns on their faces. We will apply fish scales on them in Photoshop. All thats left is the digital imaging. IFL studios, known for their superb skill in Digital Imaging, had only 3 days to pull of the fastest D.I for 4 shots with background in the history of Photoshop. Usually for fashion spread, heavy D.I is a big no-no. But in my case, I had to rely on D.I to pull off the entire spread.
I wasn't very happy with the final outcome of the spread given the tight schedule before the magazine goes to print. We tried our best, even not sleeping to finish the spread. The one image that I wasn't happy about was the end page, in front of Shibuya. When applying digital imaging, one needs to think logically on where the light falls, or is the depth of field correct? You can see models are flying all over the place, but models that is way back, the least to be seen, needs to be abit blurry to show depth of field. You can't be far away and still look sharp and clear. It doesn't gel with the background either, with the background being blurry and the model super-clear. Plus the D.I looks fake, even cartoonish on the last shot. Well, whatever's done, is done. We just learn and move on.









the lengthy version

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.

the lengthy version