YSL / Independent fragrance film
A composed character. A restless night. A fragrance translated into colour, material and rhythm.
A scent cannot be filmed directly. AFTER HOURS approaches it through a world: warm red light, dark reflective surfaces, a controlled gaze and brief tactile images of coffee, vanilla and white flowers.
The idea began as a broader fragrance-and-bag story. Resetting around one red room reduced the competing objects and gave the completed film a recognisable visual centre.
35.27s film · Character & product development · Companion visual studies
Independent Black Opium portfolio concept. Not commissioned or endorsed by Yves Saint Laurent. Companion stills are development studies.
Oxblood lacquer, burgundy velvet, dark mirrors and warm brass repeat across the setting. A fictional adult character, a face anchor and a separate room/light sheet constrain the scene development. The aim is an inhabited night, not an isolated showroom.
A direct gaze and profile hold the character still while party inserts and moving reflections raise the energy around her. Coffee, vanilla and white-flower imagery make scent tactile without a feature list.
Small changes of gaze, close product views and brief ingredient cuts create contrast. The film moves between composure and interruption rather than asking every shot to be equally dramatic.
Real front and angled bottle photographs anchor the cap, central label, shape and glittering finish. A proposed manual composite gave way to generating character, product and room together for a more natural interaction. That choice made inspection of product geometry and small lettering especially important.
Eight uncut scene sources supplied gaze, profile, party pulse, ingredients, proximity, ritual and the product ending. The final 35.27-second edit selects and connects those units; generation alone does not establish the rhythm.
Portraits, posters, static ads and a six-slide process set extend the visual world. Each surface has a different job: a portrait carries atmosphere, a poster carries identity, and a static ad must make product and message readable at a glance.
Later companion portraits explore the red-room direction.
Companion development studies.
Two designed expressions of the film's identity.
Companion development studies.
Static ads and social-format studies, presented as development work.
Companion development studies.
Earlier edits, production references and source scenes trace the decisions behind the final work.
The earlier lifestyle/bag direction was superseded by the red room. Native scene generation replaced a proposed manual product composite. The first six companion photographs were rejected for static-ad hierarchy and neck anatomy; the displayed later package is development work.
Short motion sources were developed across Seedance 2.5, Kling 3.0 Turbo, Gemini Omni Flash 1.1 and MiniMax H3. Veysel selected the footage and completed the edit. The uncut sources below are production material, not eight additional finished films.
Creative direction and final edit — Veysel Basdemir / Kontimo Studio. AI-assisted production.
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