Kai Jones • Studio

Rebel rebel
For her debut music video, Kai Jones plays an outlaw photographer in a world where colour and recorded images are banned. We follow her journey as this young rebel artist photographs her world and compiles a scrapbook of her life and work.


Underlying concept
We wanted to create a visually striking metaphor for Kai’s recording studio, a place that both facilitates and serves as a symbol for her creative process. In this instance, it is a photography dark-room, where she processes her images.
The oppressive outside world was meant as an exaggerated metaphor for the isolation that artists of all disciplines often feel – when their work is undervalued, when it is unfashionable, when it is regarded as trivial.



Art imitates life
Kai explained to us how she gathers inspiration from her real life experiences, takes these experiences and emotions into the studio, and creates her music from this.
Likewise in the video, our outlaw photographer collects experiences in the form of images, and develops them in her dark-room. In an otherwise hostile world, this is where she feels safe and can create her art.


Shades of grey
We used grey, desaturated tones for the exterior scenes to illustrate an oppressive world. Kai’s attic dark-room is the only place we see strong colours and contrast, to show that this is her safe space where she can express her creativity.




Guerilla filmmaking
We filmed the video over the course of a weekend, with a small three-person crew hopping on and off buses in between locations, and a few of our friends turning up throughout the day to appear in scenes. Kai’s real-life niece even features in the video (something she can’t quite believe!)
We stupidly chose the hottest day of the year to film the dark-room scenes, a mistake we paid for in bucket-loads of sweat in an attic that could have doubled as a sauna.


Starring: Kai Jones, Maria Paris, Joey Nathan, Adam Tedder, Luke Bryan, Suhail Patel, Santana
Director: Joseph Madden
Producer: Rory Yeung
Director of Photography: Dominic Ellis
Second Unit Camera: Luke Tedder
