BEHIND T E SCENES
Lukas leon - kokkaan
feat. kube
Bigger artists, bigger budget and even bigger ambition to create another visual that was going to break the barriers!
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The director (Shueib Dahir, @shueibdahir) contacted me for if we wanted to come help him in this project as a Director of Photography and asked me to create the whole script with him and the artist, Lukas Leon and Jare Tiihonen.
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We started planning this project in May and it was all fun and games throwing ideas together with everyone, but the work that needed to be done to get all of the pieces (Food truck, big restaurant etc.) was a bit tough, at the end of the day everything did indeed go well. We filmed the whole project with our camera, Black Magic Pocket Cinema 4K and we had the right feeling about the project right away from the beginning to the end.
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First day of shooting was in June, we shot the restaurant scene at Farangi. Jare helped us getting the whole restaurant to our use and we ended up getting it. We covered all the restaurant windows with black trash bags just to get the place look a bit darker during the mid day at summer time. We started at 9am and were done with the window covering at probably 3pm. After that Lukas came to the spot and we started to build up the filming set downstairs. We got everything done in time and then it was just time to wait for Kube, since that was his verse and the last hook of the song that we were mainly filming there.
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Kube came in, a bit late but not too much. We started the filming right away from the kitchen scene where they were cooking up.
We finished the whole shooting at 11pm. We shot the big scene in the middle of the restaurant at last.
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Second day of shooting, we shot the Buli Food Truck scene. it was kind of a hard day, since I had a rough day behind me and we had so much to do. There were the people we needed and probably like 30+ extra people just watching, mainly kids who seemed really excited watching a big project like this to be made.
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Then third day we shot the intro scene, Shueib went to the house where it was filmed a day before. He painted all the kitchen walls from white to darker green just to get the right colorways in edit later on. Big respects to this man for the dedication to his work.
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Fourth day we actually filmed twice, it was the 'endless door transition' we filmed from Lukas' second hook to Kube's verse. First day we did the lighting a bit poorly, so we had to film all of it again later on with a proper lighting.
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The project was released on 11. September so it took really long to be actually made overall. In the end it all went really well and we were planning on making more big projects together with the three of us and Lukas Leon.
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Stay tuned for more in the future from us.
Madboiali - vaihtoehtoi feat. bml
Saga continues, from 'Pikku Hiljaa' to this one.
'Vaihtoehtoi ft. BML' is probably my favourite project so far, it was the most stressful and most likely the biggest project we've directed by ourselves. Our camera lens adapter broke down in the middle of the shooting and everything just seemed like going down but we still managed to crush it and create the most out of it!
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We had three days in total filming this one.
First day we filmed BML verse in an abandoned building, we set up all the lights etc with Shueib Dahir, once again. I thought it was insanely good at the moment and afterwards we filmed it all. Everyone was a bit late, but it was all right. We had enough time to set everything up. This abandoned place was actually the same place we shot Madboiali's debut album cover 'Mielentila'.
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Second day we filmed the intro shot with the youngins, Ali's verse and the car scene with the girls and Ali & BML together.
We threw water on the ground just to make the ground reflect all the lights we set up on the roof and next to the car put in the middle. The girls in this scene did their job well and everything went well as expected. The whole thing went really late in to night since our camera lens adapter broke down, we had to return the 360 camera back to the renting place and it was just all around stressful. We managed to tape the adapter / lens together and shot it all with it still even thought it broke down completely and we had to buy another adapter later on.
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Third day, we rented the 360 camera again, and shot all the car scenes there was. Filmed it at a low shutter speed rate on camera, so it looked like we would've been driving like 100km/h, even though we probably were at 30km/h speed on the shot. It was also our first time using the 360 camera fully, so there was a lot to learn on the spot while trying to get the best shots aswell. Shueib Dahir helped us to stitch all the clips together afterwards and I'm really grateful for that.
MADboiali - pikku hiljaa
Ali sent me a message about filming this video for the song 'Pikku Hiljaa'. We had like 9 days until the music video release and we were stressing out a little about the process, but Ali and Sakke (@sakkenoor) had the script nearly ready, so we just filled it up with our ideas and made the plan whole.
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We started off with a nearly full script, so the process in the end wasn't too time consuming to make. The plan was from the beginning was to make it feel like it's a movie and deliver an important message to the youth whose mindset is on something that doesn't necessarily lead you anywhere further in life.
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First day of shooting, we shot the lipsync scenes in the blue 'smoke room', car lipsyncs and drone shots. Since it doesn't really get dark in Finland on summer time, we started at probably 11pm and finished the first day at 3 to 4am. It was worth it though. We didn't have any problems with the shoot it self and everything went well.
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Second day of shooting, we shot the whole storyline. Time schedule was around the same time for the whole night when it was dark. It was more stressful to get this done since we needed everybody in there to be involved in the script and act like it. At first it took quite a while to get started but then when we actually got started; everything did go well. Everyone who was involved were doing their jobs great. Shout out to everyone involved!
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We haven't been renting a car mount like that before on our shoots, so we had to rent it and prepare/practise the mount for a while before we were confident enough to put our Black Magic camera into it. It did go well even though it was a bit scary to just put the camera on top of a moving car held only by a couple suction caps.
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We've planned to work more in the future and create more music videos which really make u go with the story while watching the video. Stay tuned for that and meanwhile, go stream 'Pikku Hiljaa' on Spotify and watch the music video on YouTube!
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buddha - lean
One of my friends once shared Buddha's song called Lean. I just went to listen to it for fun when it came out and I got extremely impressed. There's not much good music coming in English here in Finland, so I sent him a message about wanting to work on that song after a couple days. Buddha was in for it and we started to work right away.
We had our first meeting in January and just started throwing ideas from one to another, and Buddha told us that he wanted the video to be based on dreams. Kinda like there's not much sense into it but everything still kind of makes sense somehow.
There's one scenery with balloons and pink colors representing Buddha himself or his behavior which he wanted to be shown as being playful, other one with the mirrors representing insecurities including cold blue colors and fog in it to fill the background. Third scene (shown first in video) with the wrapping paper all around Buddha was representing anxiety that the society is building up on a person. The fourth and final scene, in Suomenlinna was representing art and the way it can just free a person from your own shackles completely, not for everyone but obviously for the ones creating it. That's why we added all the white coloring just to represent that vibe.
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We shot the whole video in 2 days, or 3 because the memory card in my camera flopped on the second day and we had to reshoot all of the Suomenlinna 'art' scenes over again. All of the colored scenes were actually shot in just one small garage, we were supposed to rent a bigger one, but due to the corona virus it was impossible. So we ended up using our own.
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Everything went really well with the whole project, the garage set took probably 3 hours to build, we just stuck the newspapers together with tape and it was actually quite frustrating in a way. Wind blew into the garage every now and then, and every time it did, we had to worry about the whole thing falling apart. It wasn't on a strong hold but it just did last the time we needed it to last.
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The project ended up being my favorite at the moment and we have more incoming. Stay tuned for more!
BML - SALOMON KALOU
This project was released 17.4.2020. We were talking about shooting a music video together probably in 2019 September, but that never really happened. Then BML had this drill track on the way called 'Salomon Kalou' and we were thinking, why not to shoot a music video on this one? Drill is kind of a new wave in Finland at the time I'm writing this and it was a great idea.
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The concept of this video wasn't anything special. We didn't really have a script at all to be honest. 'Go and Shoot' was our plan and that worked out well, we only had the idea that we wanted to involve some transitions which are involving a chain (the red stripes going over the screen is actually a chain). Oh and yeah, we also wanted some fish eye shots into the project. They're so old school and fitted the vibe really well, made the video have more credibility.
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'Hood' was the theme for this video, which is a part of the drill scene in a way. The beat and sound has a certain credibility and a visual which is involving a suburb or any 'hood' vibe into it will just fit really well and fit the 'needs' into a drill music video.
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BML wanted to have a lot of friends in there and that was somewhat a problem because of the COVID-19 situation going on. We got people coming with us and everything went well, there wasn't really any problems with the shoot. There was supposed to be cars aswell though, which never arrived.
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The whole project took about 2 days to shoot, and probably 5 days to edit over all. BML wanted to release it as soon as possible and the feedback from this video has been quite crazy. We're starting to work on another music video just a few weeks from the time I'm writing this text and it's gonna have a lot more into it. Stay tuned for more and go put 'Salomon Kalou' on REPEAT!
maigout - yksin kuljen
Every story has a beginning, and this was Maigout's first music video ever. Directed by us, special thanks to Maigout for trusting in our vision on this one.
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I heard his first ever album, first time his sound and everything, and I got really impressed. My friend Yacine was featuring on this one song called 'Hullu'. So that's how I found out about him. That one really hit me and I decided to send Maigout a message for this one and then he told me that he has another song coming up which he would want a music video for. This was 'Yksin Kuljen' which stands for 'Walking Alone'.
We really liked his style in the song over all and got this vision about him being ditched by his friends and this 'girlfriend' not being a loyal one etc. (she is just an actor in this project).
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Started off with buying loads of cassettes and we ripped out the cassette tape from each one, and hung all of them up in the roof or walls. Building the set took at least 3-4 hours and I gotta shoutout his friends who were helping a LOT with the building etc. Without them we would've needed another day probably.
When all of that was ready, the shoot took probably around 2 to 3 hours in total to shoot the 'cassette scene'. After that, we were all tired and just wanted to go home, but we were scheduled to shoot the intro on the same day, so we went and did that. It was a long day with loads of scenarios to do but it was worth it and everyone in there participated well so it wasn't too hard to get done.
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Second day of shooting, we got the bedroom again from one of Maigout's friends. Thanks to him. We reorganized the room totally, which made it easier for us to shoot etc. It was the first time acting for both of them, the artist and the girl, but it went really well without any problems.
After that we filmed the outro in Kivistö, which took approximately 5 hours leading us to a finished project. The feeling was unreal, since there was so much for us to do and we finally got it done. Everyone was tired but happy and just waited for me to edit the whole project afterwards. I was so gassed about the project that it didn't take me that long to finish.
The vision really fitted in with the vibe and I've got many messages about the whole project telling me that it was a great one to watch and delivered the message we were looking for properly.
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sexmane - starboy
I heard a song from Sexmane called '2naamaa' and decided to send him a message about creating a music video together. He had an album coming on the way called 'Sextape' at that time.
He replied telling me that he had checked out a couple of our videos and was down to create another one. We went and discussed about creating a video for either 'Marco De BIH' or the actual song called 'Starboy'. We came up to the conclusion that we wanted to film the song 'Starboy'.
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I had a vision right off that it would be great to represent some memories with polaroid pictures, because this song had that kinda vibe on me at least. Also I felt like this kinda song and a video filled with red colors would stick into people's mind and have a bigger impact that way. With the lyrics added in anyways.
We had a bit trouble figuring out the location at first and the schedule was quite harsh in this one. We managed to get a studio room from Helsinki, where Sexmane took some promo pictures for the album with @shoothayley. After that photoshoot, we had about an hour left to film all of the shots we planned before, setup the whole set and everything. It was quite a challenge and we didn't manage to do it on time. We ran out of time and the studio owner was kind enough after all to let us stay probably 30 minutes longer than we should've.
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Second day of shooting, bathroom scene this time, was way easier to get done. We had no limits with time etc since we decided to shoot this scene at Sexmane's apartment. He had a bathtub in there which fit in perfectly. We colored the bath water in red and light the room up with red lighting, so it would fit in with the previous scene. This shoot didn't take that long either and it turned out perfectly as we planned.
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Then with the editing part it was a bit harder to get everything to work, since there was different visions from all of us. But I edited the base into the video with the cuts and main effects that I was thinking about at first. Then we were having a video call with Sexmane, editing the clips together with our ideas put in together. Editing took about a week over all and it turned out to be my favourite edit at that time. It still is one of the most meaningful projects for myself and probably will always be.
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I got so many positive messages from the video itself and nearly all of them telling me it was the most creative one so far. That made me really happy. Sexmane's 'Sextape' album turned out to be huge as well. So I guess everything in this project went just as planned. Looking forward for more projects to come.
