King Fantastic – “On Q”
Hip-Hop Artist King Fantastic spins the loaded gun in this daring music video as seen through the eyes of director Randal Kirk II. On Q is the follow-up to “Why? Where? What?”, a video about a maid who vandalizes the home she is tasked with cleaning while dancing to King Fantastic’s song. That video got over a million hits, so the pressure was on for Randal to deliver another blockbuster. He recalls “when I started coming up with the concept, I was fond of all the gun sounds in the audio production of the track and the sexy female vocals.” Randal eventually decided on using famous alternative pin-up models, engaged in a game of Russian strip roulette. “The song glorifies the gangster lifestyle. My message in the video is that you love the lifestyle so much you that you die for it and enjoy every minute!”
On Q was shot on a Red One MX camera using Zeiss Super Speed lenses. It is a pairing that a number of DPs I have worked with prefer, as they combine the softer qualities of these older lenses with the ultra-high resolution of modern cameras. Brett Pawlak elaborates: “These days for me it really comes down to the aesthetic of lenses, how they hold flares and how they shoot wide open. That is where you really see the characteristics of the lens and get interesting looks”. That is perhaps the reason why the raw images already had a natural ‘grit’ to them.
While the Red One has become a staple of music videos and commercials due to its affordability, availability and the great images it can expose, Brett also explains that “it is a camera that I know well, and there is no question as to what it can do when pushed. It’s very good at holding saturation, and since Randal was looking for a pop look, I picked the Red as I knew that it would POP”.
Brett’s lighting package consisted of a couple of 4x Kinos, 2′ Kinos and a handful of Par Cans. “Those lights give me the most variety that I know I can work with, on a budget”. He also had some HMIs and regular tungsten units, but prefers open-faced lights over fresnels: “I’d rather start with more light since I can always diffuse and shape with flags. An open-faced 2K is close to the output of a 4K, so when you need light, on a budget, that means a whole lot!”
The Club Looks
For the Club Scene, Randal really wanted something special. He and Brett had spent some time studying a similar scene in the film “Black Swan” and concluded that those colour changes were being achieved in post – “we lit [the scene] with one solid gel colour. I decided to light the club up blood-red. It wasn’t until we transcoded the footage and Brett played with the colour and achieved a rough black light colour by pulling out the red.” This gave Randal the confidence that the look they wanted could be achieved in post. Despite this, Randal still pushed for some in-camera effects, such as placing a prism over the lens to distort the image. From there the images were treated by Chad Simcox, the editor and motion graphics artist, augmenting the camera effects with a custom filter similar to a kaleidoscope effect.
This became the starting point for the four looks I would go on to create, the most interesting of which was my ‘Neon Look’. As we started to push the colours, this ended up being Randal’s favorite look in the entire video!
I started out by setting my contrast level, with my blacks pretty rich to play against the saturated colours I was planning on creating. The second step was the interesting one, which basically added a ton of blue to the highlights and a good amount to the mid tone. This skewed the already present red towards a magenta tone, creating some interesting interactions between the original red and the added blue.
Now, with a new ‘electric’ base, I picked a broad range of reds/magentas as the inputs colours and boosted the saturation by over 300%. This made the cooler foreground stand out against the much warmer ‘background’. The next step was a technique that I use from time to time: ‘phased vignettes’. This is the name I give to a vignette which has had it’s hue (phase) rotated. I pulled the red background almost back to my manufactured blue and darkened it. An additional layer of colour boosting the saturation really made the colours pop, much to Randal’s satisfaction!
Glamorizing Violence
Randal was clear with his crew from the start: “I wanted the Russian roulette scene to feel like a room that Dexter would make, but with showy lighting to glamorize the violence.” That location ended up being a grimy dark dungeon of a warehouse in downtown Los Angeles. The desire to beautify the violence went as far as the instructions he gave to JusticeFX, the guys doing the VFX. Randal jokes “these kids are incredible. I told them I wanted realistic violence while making it sexy. That’s a hard task to do. These guys really nailed it though!”
For me, it was about creating colour tension, which is something I have written about before. I wanted the warehouse to feel cooler, so I pushed a ton of blue across the board while pulling down hard on the blacks. The saturation in the blue created an almost electric look, while the deep blacks gave the feel that the performers were coming out of the shadows.
From there onwards I treated it like a ‘beauty’ video, focussing on soft, healthy skin tones for the models, creating natural glows around the highlights in their faces and hair, while bringing out the detail in the intricate tattoos they were each adorned with. The juxtaposition between the cool environment and warm and inviting faces creates drama, which is what this music video is all about.
On Q was intended to be a viral video created to promote the brand. Because of the graphic and violent content, it would never air on TV, but Randal is not particularly concerned since he designed it to live on Vimeo. Brett broadly agrees: “If the only version that exists lives on the internet, then that is where it belongs.” This train of thought is not necessarily consigned to just music videos, as our industry shifts from a broadcast-style way of distributing content to niche-casting, delivered either by streaming platforms like Netflix or Hulu, or directly from the web itself through sites such as YouTube and Vimeo.
You can check out the final music video on Vimeo and more stunning visuals by visiting the Gallery.
For more work from the creative team, please visit their respective websites: Randal Kirk, Brett Pawlak and Chad Simcox.
Miles Fisher – “New Romance”
Miles Fisher rounds up his “Final Destination 5” co-stars for his pop single “New Romance”, paying homage to the 90s TV classic “Saved by the Bell”, complete with death-inducing falling lockers and razor-sharp flying records! Directed by Dave Green and shot by Benji Bakshi, the music video spoof is part of Warner Bros. online viral marketing campaign for the movie.
Shot in a single day at Red Studios in Hollywood, it seems appropriate that the camera of choice was the Red One MX, combined with a Cooke Varatol 18-100 zoom lens. This was a single day shoot, and although Dave storyboarded the entire music video, the cast and crew had to move fast to get all the coverage. Zooms are essential in this respect, and came in handy when also pulling off those cheesy zooms!
For lighting, Benji did a great job of lighting the set to look like a 90s sitcom. He used 20 4K supersoft lights, 5 6K spacelights, and relied on Source 4 Leikos for accent. “We built our own grid and rigged all the lighting to an Expression 2 dimmer board for control and practical dimming gags. We prelit all 3 sets so we could meet our schedule”. A few supersofts on stands to move around for fill lights rounded up the lighting package.
Bubble-Gum Look
For New Romance, Benji wanted the images to have a real poppy, bubble-gum look, which in my world translates to bright, saturated colours with warm and healthy skin tones. The debayered image (see below) provided a good starting point, with a rich palette and plenty of fill light to help replicate that classic sitcom look Benji was after. I was happy when I looked at the images and didn’t see any clipping – not a given considering the huge range of exposure between the off white walls, chequered floor and everything in between!
I started off with a simple base grade, using master controls and the joyballs to establish some cleans blacks and highlights. This got rid of some of the green residue I could see creeping into the highlights and the mid tones. From there on it was all about finessing; using a nifty tool called Revolver I was able to quickly qualify up to 10 colours and boost their saturation, swing the hue and generally lower the brightness to bring out the richness in the primaries. Generally with a look like this I prefer to blast the reds, greens, blues and purples, being a little more careful with the reds and yellows, which is where the skin tones sit.
The ability to key back to any colour layer is very important, especially to recover skin tones, shadows and highlights. For this music video I ended up creating different layers to treat each element separately. This was essential for achieving warm but realistic skin tones, as well as for pulling back the clipped walls and floor, a by-product of my attempt to keep the image bright and cheerful. I’m a firm believer of simplicity, but sometimes the simplest looks end up being the toughest to achieve. Having that kind of flexibility gives you a lot of flexibility.
You can check out more stills in the Gallery.
To see more examples of Benji’s work, visit his website.
American Apparel
Shot and directed by photographer Tony Kelly, this latest commercial for American Apparel pits the superb talents of two break dancers – Lil Demon and Jalen – against each other in this high-rise dance off.
Tony was searching YouTube one day for break dancers and came across these two world champions separately. He had the idea of bringing them together for the first time, and having them battle it out against a glamorous backdrop, instead of the grimy surroundings usually associated with the breakdancing scene. The commercial is shot on the rooftop of American Apparel’s HQ in downtown LA to showcase the company’s new kid collection.
For this shoot, Tony paired a Red One camera (MX sensor) with an Angenieux 25-250 zoom lens. The entire commercial was shot at 120 fps for a slow motion effect that is cut to classical music – a strong contrast to the breakdance performances. Tony wanted a colourful, youthful look with glowing, bright faces full of life.
A Softer Approach
This was easier said than done. Since it was overcast on the day of the shoot, only the dancers in the foreground had any colour in them; the background was almost completely grey. In this situation, it becomes very difficult to pull an accurate key because you are missing the Hue component for an HSL (Hue, Saturation, Luminance) qualification. A different approach is needed.
I began by adding contrast and increasing saturation a little. You need to be careful though: cranking up the saturation in a desaturated image will introduce noise – the opposite of the clean, youthful look we a going for. Instead, I decided to pull a couple of ‘loose’ keys on the background buildings and then the skyline, adding some warmth in the former and some blue to the latter, creating an almost duotone effect. Because we are introducing colour instead of saturating what is already there, we end up with crisper, more uniform colours. For the sky I further restricted my qualification with a feathered ellipse, essentially graduating the amount the blue added. Now with a much ‘cleaner’ set of colours I applied overall saturation before bringing out the faces a little that were now buried in the contrast.
This approach can work when you are going for a more ‘fluid’ look, where you really don’t care about colours spilling into each other. The pastel feel of the background helps the break dancers in the foreground stand out. Overall, the client was thrilled with the way we managed to transform the overcast photography into the colorful images you can see in the Gallery.
You can see the full commercial on Vimeo.
You can see more of Tony Kelly’s amazing work here.
Milton Adamou 