Music Videos, Beats and More

The Holy Sinner – ‘Born To Rap’ music video by Avene

Now this is the sort of video I like making! Quick to shoot, fun to edit and just as much fun to watch. Sinner and Vame came all the way out to my area for this one.

The Holy Sinner - 'Born To Rap' music video

I took them down to the bushland above Shelly Beach at Manly for the video. Actually, some of that bushland may be closer to North Head. I was originally planning on using another location as well, but we decided there were enough shots already. Plenty to work with anyway. Most of the takes were shot around the gun pits. These were military installations that were used for defending Sydney back in World War Two. So those big bolts you see in the opening shot of the clip were what held the guns in place.

The clip is basically a raw hip hop clip. These are the sort clips I like making, where I can just shoot a bunch of different takes and edit the whole thing together with funky edits and a few effects thrown in. This video was of course shot on the Canon S95. The footage came out quite nice, but to be honest, I rarely end up with that many bad takes using the S95. It’s very reliable.

Now for a few before and after shots. The first one below is Sinner’s opening shot. This was shot with the music playing at half the speed. It’s one of those old tricks that you used to see a lot in music videos. Busta Rhymes videos spring to mind. And I even remember a Tori Amos video that used the same effect.

The Holy Sinner - Born To Rap

Now, this actual take was shot in bright daylight. At the time I was still waiting for the Lensmate adapter I’d ordered to arrive, which would have enable me to use ND filters on the camera to reduce the shutter speed, as I mentioned here. Anyway, to smooth it out I used the Damaged TV plugin from the Boris BCC7 set, and a fake New Blue Fx fish eye filter. I got the effect I was after and tweaked the Damaged TV plugin settings for a more edgy look.

The Holy Sinner - Born To Rap

The next shot below where you see his head through the wall. I had no idea how I would use this take when I first shot it. I just thought it looked interested, seeing his head through that hole in a big old stone wall!

The Holy Sinner - Born To Rap before

So to to spice it up a bit, as you can see below, I’ve added a few effects. Firstly there’s a vignette around the outside. I made a few adjustments there. Next I added the BCC lightning plugin, which worked quite nicely also. But camera position had shifted slightly towards the end of the video, so I then used a couple of lens flares to cover up the start and end points of the video.

The Holy Sinner - Born To Rap after

The next shot below was a locked tripod shot in the first gun pit we visited. I masked out the two open areas at the back. Then there’s a beach take at the very back. I grabbed this a few days later during an afternoon walk to Manly. It was Queensclif beach with a boat at the back. The Explosions are from Detonation Films.

The Holy Sinner - 'Born To Rap' before 2

Below is the final composite. I used the Boris BCC7 light wrap plugin around the edge of the mask. There’s a lens flare in there as well. For keying, I just used the Vegas keyer, but used the BCC7 matte clean up plugin around the edges. This is actually a bad frame to use as an example! I won’t say why though, but it’s a problem I see occur in a lot of greenscreen compositied shots in tv shows. Also, one last thing, I used a sepia filter over the whole video, but set to 50%. Oh, and I didn’t use Neat Video on this video. The video didn’t really need it to be honest.

The Holy Sinner - Born To Rap after 2

And lastly, below is a screenshot of the edit. One thing you’ll notice here is that every clip used in the video is visible in the project media window I have open there. So few clips, but I used them wisely.

AThe Holy Sinner - Born To Rap - Sony Vegas Screenshots always, feel free to leave a comment below.

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About Avene
Sydney based artist specialising in creating music videos, cinematography, music production & beat making, digital art, sound design & photography.