A music video I recently shot for neo-soul artist Lilla D’mone was an exercise in conceptual simplicity.  The song “Wake Up” appeals a call for worldwide social awareness and solidarity. The scope is wide and fairly timeless, so we felt it necessary that the photography of the music video showcase the song by being complementary but understated.

On the shoot day, there were only 3 setups, two of them portraits of of the artists expressing images of Lilla in slightly skewed realities.  The third was to be a truer image of the artist, equal parts combination of the first two characters, but also possessing greater depth.

Visually, the differences between the Lilla personalities, and their ultimate unification were achieved through lighting, lens choice, filtration, wardrobe and makeup.  Special thanks go to makeup artist Terri Lodge for her lightning fast, beautiful work, and Koerner Camera for letting me test a few dozen optical filters in the days leading up to this shoot.

The song starts out with the words “I don’t know if i’m dreaming”, and I felt this sentiment could be expressed through the selective-focus wedge particular to a lensbaby “composer” lens.  At a 5.6 aperture, the corners are fuzzed out while Lilla sits against a blackout background, imparting a slightly disorienting, dreamlike feeling, at the same time speaking to the distress of the rock-bottom plight of the first “alternate Lilla” character the audience will see.  I used a tiffen Enhancing filter to offset the skin tones and blue highlights in the scene, and create a rich color contrast.

Next, the video transitions to another character, almost a polar opposite.  Gaffer Mike Ferry, and key grip John Petrina built a light box around the character we came to call “the diva”, using kino flos through bleached muslin to approximate cover-girl style lighting combined with a 105mm nikkor lens and Tiffen Soft FX 2 filter.

The third Lilla is also lit softly, but retains a bit of classier edge light and some shape to her facial structure.  In order to show the tumult of the world expressed in “Wake Up”, and bring each of Lilla’s realities together, we projected images of the alternate characters, and worldwide protests and tragedies onto, and around the third Lilla.  The intent of the resulting visual elements was to underscore the lyrics and delicately deepen the feeling of the song, and I think we pulled this off pretty nicely.

The music video for Lilla D’mone’s “Wake Up” will be released in early May.

Camera:  Canon 5d Mk.II

Lenses: Lensbaby 50mm Composer

Nikkor 50mm, and 105mm

Shot in H.264, posted and mastered in ProRes 422