Juno Vale and three friends spend one night drifting between neon bars and back rooms in Los Angeles, lit only by the signs around them.
Kofi wrote Afterglow as a night out told in portraits. Each verse belongs to a different friend, each friend to a different room, and every room is lit by whatever was already on the walls: a sign workshop's back catalogue, a yard of old marquee letters, a bus shelter on a wet street.
Joaquín Ferrer added almost nothing. He brought practicals into frame instead of lighting around them, putting neon tubes inches from the lens so they bloom across faces, and shot a fast spherical prime wide open to let the backgrounds melt. The only fixture on the truck was a small battery panel, used twice. We shot over three nights with a crew of eleven and a rain tower for the final verse.
Daniel Okafor cut each portrait as a single drifting move, joined by whip pans that hide the change of location. In the grade, Eun-ji Park left the clipped neon highlights alone rather than pulling them back.
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Behind the scenes
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