How a phone call turned into staying up until 5AM for a Week - editing great fashion videos we shot the evening before

Prologue

It's Sunday Night. I am at the supermarket, buying groceries. A calm night, a bit chilly - the perfect weather to jump into our apartment's jacuzzi. Hiroki and me jump in there all the time, we really make use of that lonely amenity that most residents of the 300 apartments in our big Long Beach complex ignore, for some reason. But tonight it's already too late; I worked so much on other stuff that I just made it to the supermarket at 10PM, right before it closes - and now the jacuzzi will be closed too.

Just as I load the groceries into the Firebird, crying about my missing jacuzzi experience, I get a phone call from a friend I met at SMC, Petras. "Hey Toby, a friend of mine really needs someone to cover a fashion event he has tomorrow. Can you call him, like, right now?"
All right, I call the guy, and get booked for Monday noon, for a fashion show in Downtown LA. Just this Saturday I was at an event/bar where they had a fashion show - it was the first fashion show I ever saw live - and I really liked it, so maybe this one would be fun too. Hiroki and me still do freelance work so that we can keep our household halfway economical while we are setting up everything for presenting Prodigium as an entity (website, informational materials etc.) - so, for me it's a nice little freelance job where I get to see another fashion show.

The show turns out to be on the top floor of a downtown building, where many vendors set up camp to sell their fashion apparel - I really could care less about fashion, I'm not even remotely interested in it. The runway show goes well, but it's pretty bare-bones; just a little wall, some plastic folding chairs and some cool clothing design. At the event, I meet a very tall guy named "T". He tells me that I have to go to a fashion show tonight at this place called "Vibiana" - and I'd get in if I just show my press pass. Upon returning to la casa, I tell Hiroki about it, and since we only have editing and webdesign on our plate that night, we think - why not, and go.

Fashion  is like Film - an addicting, fast-paced art form.

Not in a thousand years I would have thought I'd ever find any way to get interested in fashion, and definately not to be genuinely excited about a fashion show... but seriously, you would have to be an idiot not to be stoked by a huge party with free drinks, free energy drinks (we snatched a few for long editing nights) and lots of cool-looking people. Since we arrive with huge tripods and professional cameras and say "We're media", we get in. We get in, we drink tons of Monster energy drinks, get super-jittery hands, film the fashion shows (it's a sport in itself to work with DSLR zoom lenses and capture the right moments, framing and focus on these models!), talk to the designers and hand out our  business cards, hop into our car, drive home, edit the fashion shows we just shot until five in the morning, fall asleep under the editing desk and our movie-watching couch.That's how an entire week looks like for us - the LA fashion week. We actually were so affected by the experience that we decided to add an additional service to our three core production services - commercials, music videos and image films - namely Fashion. Ironically, while we attend the big parties, we visit the OccupyLA-camp, which is only two blocks from the fashion week at Vibiana - and capture some really interesting emotions.

If you want to see these impressions fresh and uncut, you're lucky: We don't just write, we also shoot.

The Results of a Week of follwing the symphony of clothing, models, makeup and hairstyles

Without question, the first impression you get on a fashion show is: Damn, it's big, it's elaborate and it's very rhytmic. House music a la carte, the beat coinciding with the models' high heels hitting the runway. A spectacle that you have to edit in the same way you experience it live. That's what we ended up with:

Amato Haute Couture: Furne One

2011 | Downtown Los Angeles | USA

Amato Haute Couture at Vibiana during the LA Fashion Week 2011, presenting their Spring/Summer 2012 collection.

Kareena's

2011 | Downtown Los Angeles | USA

Kareena's at Vibiana during the LA Fashion Week 2011, presenting their Spring/Summer 2012 collection.

Napoleon Perdis Makeup & Alternative Apparel

2011 | Downtown Los Angeles | USA

Alternative Apparel at Vibiana during the LA Fashion Week 2011, presenting their Spring/Summer 2012 collection.
Napoleon Perdis' crew did the makeup of the runway models.

Gypsy05

2011 | Downtown Los Angeles | USA

Gypsy05 at Vibiana during the LA Fashion Week 2011, presenting their Spring/Summer 2012 collection