Our latest collaboration with DC, the "Five Roses" Unilite Flex Trainer, has been in the works for quite a while now. My involvement with the actual design was very minimal, but I still witnessed the many stages that the shoe went through. Our design team wanted to make that silhouette feel a bit more elegant and more casual and I think that we nailed it on this one. My involvement came more within the marketing process of the shoe. Angelo and JK wanted me to elevate the shoe, but still keep our OTH DNA. DC is known as a skate brand, but we wanted to make it look like a fashion brand, especially for our collaboration. Many brainstorms and discussions took place. Research and development for the video of the shoe was pretty intense. My main stress was "How do I make it look different from all the other DC videos out there?" I wanted to stay away from all the easy video look books you see every 2 days. Which consist of moving images and a song from the latest "cool" band...
I was focused on one thing, making it look like a sequence from a film. I wanted an epic feel but still remain mysterious at the same time. The Unilite is a training shoe so getting away from the "training" element of it was out of the question. It is a running shoe at the end of the day.
Our protagonist in the film is none other then Daouda, one of our salesmen at the shop and soon to be international model. The outfit worn by the actor was specifically designed for the film. It was made to fit him. We made it out of the same material as the shoe. It all blended well together with the empty concrete texture of the set. Grey, grey, grey...That was the color.
The shots we took came out super nice(thanks to Oli, my DOP for that shoot), but the image is only half of the process. The sound played a major role for me in this video. So, shots are done and editing is done. The guy is running somewhere, we don't know why or where. Awesome, that's what I wanted. Now I got a video with no sound.GREAT! I make music but I am not a sound editor. I first did a mockup with some sounds I found on the web. I had an idea, but it still sounded like shit. So I called my buddy Jean-Nic from Le Matos and sent him my mockup. He understood what I wanted right away and that was it. The film finally came to life...The footsteps sounded real, the background sound gave it a dramatic effect, the clothing shrugging, it was all about the ambient sound for this video. That is the "Five Roses"...See you next time!
- Johnny F. Kim (SHOT BY JFK)