The Neon Court launch film almost did not happen on the night we shot it. The forecast called for clear skies and Kai had built the entire shot list around wet pavement reflections, which meant we either waited for the next storm or we changed the concept. Kai does not change concepts, so we waited. Around two in the morning a light drizzle started and within twenty minutes the pavement on the closed street was reflective enough to shoot.
Kai works almost exclusively with available light and a single handheld LED panel for fill. The Neon Court shoot used a Sony body with a fast prime and a tripod for the long-exposure light trails that became the visual anchor of the campaign. He does not believe in chasing the latest gear and he has shot entire campaigns on bodies that the rest of the industry would consider outdated. The argument is that a camera you know completely is more useful than a camera with better specs that you are still learning.
The cast for the shoot was pulled from the local skate scene the day before, which is standard practice for Kai. He prefers working with people who already move naturally in the clothes rather than models who have to be coached into a posture. Most of the final frames in the lookbook were captured in the first thirty minutes of the shoot, before anyone started performing for the camera. The lesson he keeps repeating is that the best frames happen when people forget you are shooting.
The shoot wrapped at four in the morning and Kai developed the film the same day in his hotel bathroom. He scanned it overnight and delivered the final selects to the VoltHaus team by the following afternoon. The entire campaign, from casting to delivery, took less than forty-eight hours, which is a pace most studios would consider impossible. Kai would say the pace is only possible because the concept was clear before the shoot started.
