Overview
Video Production
Music Video
Casting
Visual effects
Art Direction
Tattoos that came to life
The music video we produced for the song Save My Soul /Separ ft. Yzomandias/, belongs to the Nefkus showcase. The post-production journey from idea to premiere was a challenging one. The bushes came alive, the head grew out of the mouth in the loop, and in less than two months from the initial idea, the number of views of the darkly profound story began to grow. In the Save My Soul project, we showcased a piece of that Nefkusna and the full range of our creative services.
Animated tattoos get under your skin
Idea
For a few months we had an idea in our heads that was a perfect match for the feat of Separo and Yzomandias. Giving life to tresses was an unconventional idea, which turned out to be unique in the world. From the initial idea, the new approach foreshadowed a departure from the beaten video-maker’s path, and the animated tattoos got under Separo’s skin as a fitting symbolism to his metaphors. The word was given and in mid-January 2023 we got down to business.
Production
Every production starts with an idea. Once ours got the OG’s blessing, the first scenes for the music video, the storyboard and finally the complete script were put on paper. We manned the artdirector’s chair, secured the casting and props, and the studio of the friendly Hector Agency was taken over for a day by the unglamorous production team.
We faced several challenges on set, but none of them went over our heads. Growing heads in the loop, and growing bushes in the wasteland both waited for us in post-production.
How did the field grow in an empty studio?
Separ, in his leather coat, bagandji and straw hat, embodies the gradual destruction of the ego, the return to personality and the new man. A raven sits on his shoulder as a reference to the underworld and the afterlife. To enhance the feeling of human loneliness, reflection and abandonment, we created an environment of a barren field with dry vegetation. However, we planted only one shrub in the study. Further planting took place in post-production in multiple steps. We retouched the environment and gradually created a full-fledged wasteland. We copied the live material from the central setup, which grew about half of the completed vegetation.We placed it around the space and then transplanted it into 3D.
We call it compositing
When moving the camera it is essential that the parallax effect is clearly visible, so we added depth to the scene by arranging the elements in multiple levels. Sky´s the limit. And we weren’t stopped by the sky, which we got into the scene by using the timeless video of the sky we had available.
Right out of the dark sky, a raven landed on Separo’s shoulder, a symbol of the black afterworld. However, the big predator wore an ornithological ring on his foot during the filming, which somehow didn’t fit the unbridled image of hell. We therefore freed the raven in post-production using rotoscoping. We took out the ring, tracked the bird’s movement and then retouched the missing parts. Then he could spread the wings of the underworld freely.
Ufo could fly away, Yzomandias lose his head
For the central idea – animating tattoos – the unfussy studio turned into a tattoo studio for a while. On set, we first photographed the shrubs on Separa’s head, then covered them with makeup, and in post-production we glued them back together in their animated form. And the ufo on Sephar’s temples actually ejected the bridge. Yzomandias, in turn, was ejected on a wooden stake. We filmed his head impaled on a pole with the help of a green screen and the moment of his head greedily growing out of his own mouth was achieved thanks to an infinity loop.
“The clip has an artistic character, and it’s not for everyone”
Like a lot of other things we are working on. We often swim against the current, but it goes much better than a lukewarm self-float. Despite this, and perhaps because of it, the clip already has more than 1.6 million views since its March release. It cost us one month of preparation, one production day and two months of post-production. And it has made us want to do even more things that ooze such Nefkus.
