The Birth of Late Night Series: A Studio Evening

It didn't begin by planning a series. It began on an evening.

In my free time, to develop my cinematography side, I was shooting videos in the studio with my dancer friends. They weren't commercial work, they didn't have a brief, they didn't have a deadline. They were just experiments where I stood behind the camera and worked the dialogue between movement and light. One evening a few of us came together again. We sipped drinks, talked, music played. Someone's offhand line at one moment was: "The camera is set, the lights are already there, come on let's shoot something. What we shoot doesn't matter."

That's where it started.

We had no concept of what we were going to do. We just had the energy of the person on stage that evening, my eye behind the camera that evening, and the shared dopamine that built between us. We shot. We watched. We said, "What should we call this?" Someone else said, "Late Night." We all laughed. That was the name. Late Night Series.

I need to clarify something here, because the series itself is wide open to misunderstanding.

The models of Late Night Series are GoGo dancers. Not actors, not models. Professional GoGo dancers. I know this profession is badly misdefined in our country. I know what comes to people's minds when GoGo dancer is said. But the truth is: these people are all real artists. They use their bodies like an instrument. They've trained for years, they know composition, rhythm, stage, building dialogue with light, the camera frame, all of it. Working with them is a different kind of creative work, because they are already producers on stage. I just build the same sensitivity behind the camera.

Once that's clear, I can talk about the real intent of the series.

Late Night Series is an erotic series. I don't deny this. But the place where the eroticism stands is very specific. It's not what you think. This series is not a collection of sexy female portraits. It's a series that runs through erotic imagery but stands across from it. A series that pretends to show but actually plays with the viewer's expectation. Brings the hand close to pornography, then pulls it back. Creates a momentary "so this is it, so it's like this" feeling in the viewer, then strikes the subject from a different place.

This series is a little fetish-flavored. True. But it is absolutely not pornographic. There is a mountain of difference between the two. Pornography tries to satisfy the viewer. Late Night Series tries to disturb the viewer. Pornography promises to show. Late Night hides while showing, escapes from there while convincing you it's showing. Pornography puts the viewer at the center, serves their expectation. Late Night puts the viewer across, plays with them.

This difference forms the heart of the series.

During the shoot, I and the models all know the same thing: artistic focus. None of our aim during this shoot is arousal. Both of our aim is to build a tension, a visual gesture, a composition that traps the viewer. That's why there's a strange concentration during the shoot. Music plays, light is set, camera runs, but everyone is not inside the subject, but one step above the subject. We're building a game together, not the game the viewer expects.

Models sometimes hesitate about this series, true. But the only reason is the risk of misunderstanding. When the concept is fully understood, no one hesitates. Because the concept actually respects their creative language. I don't shoot this series with actors, because actors' approach is a different discipline. An actress plays a character. A GoGo dancer builds a composition with the rhythm of her own body. Late Night Series wants the second.

Let me also say this about format. This series is not cinema. I want to clarify this because when people see someone behind the camera, they automatically think "is he making cinema." No. Maybe not even short film. Because each video is between 1 and 1.5 minutes. This brevity is no coincidence. Because this series doesn't tell a story. It tells a moment. The tension of that moment, the play of that moment, the irony of that moment. If it were longer, if it were story, the message would be lost. A 1-minute gesture can hit harder than a 90-minute film sometimes.

So far I've been sharing short teasers of the series on Instagram. I upload some to YouTube. The plan: after 10-15 videos are completed, I'll publish this series more deeply on YouTube. Maybe one day it's shown in an exhibition. Why not. The idea of an exhibition is not far for me. I can imagine this series standing on a gallery wall. A dark room, small screens, the viewer passing one by one. That atmosphere is in my head.

This series is not commercial work. I said this but let me say it again because it's important. There is something Late Night Series gives back, but it's not commercial. It's artistic. By shooting I improve myself, the models improve themselves by being shot, the content that emerges is the visual record of one evening's dopamine. That's enough earning for us.

Just as Rebellious Luxury works on the main job side, Late Night Series works on the art side. The same philosophy, a different intent. Not sterile, not pastel, not the expected thing. Not what the client wants, but a step beyond what's needed. In a Rebellious Luxury commercial film I dress a woman in brand clothing. In Late Night the same woman, as a GoGo dancer, expresses herself in a different tone. The visual language is similar in both. In both, ordinary viewer expectations are not given much attention.

I shoot this series at night because night is the honest hour. During the day everyone is in a role. At night people lower their masks a little. The atmosphere changes when it gets late in the studio, light works differently, music is heard differently, the camera's eye looks differently. The name Late Night Series exists for exactly this reason. It was born at night, it's shot at night, it speaks of the night.

One evening, one sentence: "Come on let's shoot something, what we shoot doesn't matter."

I understand now. It mattered.