BOSS "Fly High" filmed with Blackmagic Ursa Mini 4.6K & Zeiss Ultra Prime lenses (Music Video)

This is a reupload for filmmaking and portfolio purposes. Original video was released on 31/Mar/2017 on "Areia Creations" channel.

This project was the first time I had the opportunity to work with a girl group. This was the debut music video for the 4 girls of the group. Although the management behind the project was Korean, the girl group and the project were abroad in Philippines, which I had to travel to. Due to a number of unknows since this was my first time in Philippines, but also because of the scale of the project, I have chosen to hire people locally, including a DP and his team, lighting and grip crews. This allowed me to focus on the directing part, although I was still responsible for a number of logistics, props and set creation. Although I had some assistants before in my other projects, this was the first time I had full crews to work under me.

This was also the first time to do a dual language music video, with separate takes for each language. Music Videos, especially Kpop style, comprise of four categories of shots: Storyline, Modelling, Performance, Dance. While storylines and sometimes modelling shots could take hours to design and film just for a few seconds worth of footage, performance and dance shots only requires half to a minute for each take, after of course the set is created. In order for a music video to be multilingual, extra takes for each language are required, for all the performance and dance shots. This is only a very little part of the total time of the music video filming, usually doesn't cost anything more and creates two separate products that can be marketed to different audiences. After the edit for one of the languages finish, the second can be easily created by switching (and roughly adjusting) to the clips of the other language(s). This is something that I have designed for a couple of music videos back in 2014-15 but unfortunately those were never released, so this is the first one filmed in that way to make it out. This is English Version but there is also a Tagalog version here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=169...

The Blackmagic Ursa Mini 4.6K PL mount was used along with Arri Zeiss Ultra Prime lenses. The filming took place in two days, one at a golf course and another in a night club. This project had its own restrictions and complex logistics, and it was a good experience for me to come up with on the spot solutions. I have carried a 4 drive RAID with me, in order to ensure the data will make it back safe, leaving a local backup as well. These days I would have rather chosen SSD drives instead which are much less susceptible to damage but back then were much pricier.

I was really happy with the pop I could get from the camera and lenses combo. I have edited the project in Premiere Pro and moved to Resolve for colouring (Resolve was not much of an editor at that time). The management and the girls were very happy with the result and the music video is quite unique artistically as it combines the Filipino girl group, the KPOP style and my own touch.

In general, it was a wonderful experience, it gave me further experience and it was a nice proof to myself I could "lift" any size of project, providing of course I'm surrounded with a great crew. It also further improved my process in pre-production, especially when working for a project abroad and you can't plan every factor before actually going there.

I have since worked on other girl groups and more complex music videos but I was happy to hire again the DP of this music video Dom Dycaico on future projects.

Thank you for watching!