Early in 2016 I sat down with art director Elroy Klee & cinematographer Erik Journée from
NEW DAY studio to come up with a concept for this year’s Red Bull Illume. After pitching different ideas at each other we quickly agreed to try shooting something with mirrors. Instead of a street spot we decided to go indoors, but not to a typical skatepark. We contacted the guys at skatepark Pier 15 in Breda (The Netherlands). This skatepark is more like an indoor ‘street spot’, with concrete ramps, curbs and stairs. We knew this would fit the image we had in mind.
We started cutting mirrors in our studio into different (small and large) shapes and tested them to see how big they needed to be to see the trick and different parts of the obstacle. We opted for triangle shaped mirrors to complement the obstacles in the background, to create a clean, even balanced look. Almost 12 mirrors later we finally had the pieces that would fit the picture. We headed out to Pier 15 together with Dutch skateboarder Rob Maatman. A couple of c-stands were used to angle the mirrors in a way that they almost looked like a puzzle; connect all the pieces and you see the entire obstacle. The outcome is a balanced action picture combined with graphic pieces and skatepark objects.
