midnight purple eyes - kaplan dayhill
kaplan's debut needed a visual world that could carry his first public-facing work. the challenge: build a believable city for his character to live in, and do it as a three-person collaboration with victor (metabiite) and kaplan himself, each owning a distinct part of the pipeline.
make the city feel like the urban environment the character actually lives in. kaplan wanted the world built around his character, so we filmed at night, letting the empty streets, streetlight pools, and architecture become a character of their own around the performance.
a tight collaboration: octavio shot, directed, and graded the color of the images; victor (metabiite) handled the edit. the night shoot and color built the world; the edit carried the rhythm.
shot at night across the city, the footage builds kaplan's world from the ground up, streetlight, architecture, and performance layered into a single sustained mood.
released as an instagram campaign, with a second collaboration continuing the visual language established in the first. the night-world built here became the foundation for kaplan's ongoing visual identity.