Take a deep dive into the making of Hello Luna's Music Video "Mind Games."
Over the years, we’ve worked with many talented, ambitious, and creative artists, but even the best of them question themselves and their art. There’s no easy way around this, but a big thing we spend time focusing on is bringing the best version of their art and ideas to life. The Mind Games music video with Hello Luna, it started with a pretty different idea conceptualized by Kenzie that we all got excited about. Still, with time closing in, a few questioning thoughts arose.
Kenzie is off the charts in managing the group, creating the vision, and showcasing great leadership. We love seeing artists with a drive for both creation and execution. Even with that, the idea of shooting a music video in a kitchen and crazy lighting felt less and less good up until the shoot. Being bold and different takes a lot of courage. One of the ways we helped Kenzie navigate her idea more confidently was by reassuring her the idea was good to us and exciting and sharing our plan for how we would pull it off.
Maybe this is a 101 lesson, but being in the music video space for years, one of the biggest values we bring to artists is sharing our plans as much as our ideas. Making a big investment can create plenty of intrusive thoughts, and we’re constantly trying to make artists feel good every step of the way. This makes better projects and, truthfully, lets us have more fun in as close to a stress-free setting as possible.
Once we were all on the same page, it was action time. We moved into this production with a lot of clarity, and it let HL and JECP integrate and bounce good ideas back and forth easier.
Theres a few layers to this video that we crafted through 3 looks. At its core, it’s an in-your-face performance video with lots of art direction, set design, cool practical effects, and technical lighting.
The main look was the kitchen with the full band and wide lighting arrangement. We mapped three light designs out of one scene with the full band to keep this fresh. There was a static colorful lighting look, a strobing glitch look with all the colorful lighting, and for the intro, we did a single key only to introduce Kenzie as more isolated. We made this move quickly by utilizing the Aputure Sidus App for mapping the Aputure lights via Bluetooth and used the easy 4-preset buttons on the Kino Flo Select 20s. Aputure x Kino Flo together always feels like the perfect storm in creating a fast-paced set, managing multiple looks quickly, and covering various lighting qualities and hues with custom effects.
After we knocked out the first scene, we moved into the second look, which was single-member shots with Mylar (a reflective sheathing used for growing plants) to make an interesting look and symbolize reflection and to set up the third look that was all Mylar crinkle walls. This second look was meant to be darker for certain parts of the song and to give the viewer a more diverse experience. You can watch the behind-the-scenes making of the music video below.
Shot by Will Fairbanks | Edited by Jenna Van Kley
Our last look was the full mylar look which feels most nostalgic to early 2000s music videos. We took a few v-flats, attached them with gaff tap, and started crinkling the mylar and attaching them with painter’s tape to make the look. We wanted this to feel big, bright, and different, like the old MTV days. In doing this, we bought lots of lighting power and softened it through an 8x8 silk. This helped us reduce unsavory reflections from the mylar and made for some of our favorite fashion lighting styles.
Additionally, we shot this extra wide with a 16mm and included the matte box 4x3 ratio to make it different. Stylizing a layer further, we shot with a 360-degree shutter making this blurred in-camera effect, and added a Prism Lens effects Dream Filter and 1/4 Pearlescent Tiffen Filter to really make the highlights glow. This look was a lot to really nail down, but it’s what sells this video, and Kenzie crushed it with a bunch of interactive performances and fun vibes.
All around, this video turned out amazing, and we are so proud of how it came together. It’s all about working with great artists, being respectful, and creating a safe space for everyone to express themselves. The final video shows.
JECP | Creating Confident Artists
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