This music video was done for Kissing Disease, a small German neue neue deutsche Welle band and was part of my exchange semester in Budapest. The Song called toy, is written from the perspective of a person pursuing a relationship with a highly emotionally abusive person. This antagonist is said to "destroy" people and move onto the next, not really valuing individuals.
My aim was to show this power dynamic in an abstract way, a lot of this is achieved by costumes and the way the characters act and interact. The video tells a story about the abuser (dressed in white) collecting more and more people and hurting those over time, while disposing of the old ones. Emotional concepts are shown in a more visual way by using props, physical wounds or analogies like submerging peoole in water.
We had about 8 days for filming at different locations, at times we were around 12 people on set, including actors. My role was coordinating everything and making sure my vision and concept was captured in the right way. Light, Camera handling and makeup were mainly done by other people under my advice. My main support on set were Nico and Willi. Nico did most of the camera handling, chose the right settings and found the perfect camera angles. Willi handled lighting and all the correlating equipment in the shots to create the desired atmosphere.
Since some of the shots involved water and during the time of filming it was about 0 degrees Celsius we had to plan everything beforehand and sometimes had one shot only.
I cut, edited and color graded the full video in DavinciResolve. Some alterations and special things were done on Adobe After Effects. I also designed a logo for the song. Underneath you can see my 3 primary color grading steps, the one in the left is the raw footage. I began with correcting the shots to look "natural" before applying a style. After that I did shot specific corrections like highlighting certain areas.
The video was filmed using the Red Epic Dragon 6k, most of the shots were filmed in 4k and 25fps. The used lenses were Zeiss Milvus lenses in 21mm, 38mm, 50mm, 85mm and we used different artificial lighting sources for all the shots.
Planing the shots and costumes, choosing Locations (all in Halle, Germany) and a planning the filming days was besides post-production one of the biggest tasks I did. From the first Idea to filming, there were about 2 months of time, in which I did other projects for other classes. I had to plan everything remotely and only connected to the other teammates via Zoom, as the Video was a Uni project at my Erasmus in Budapest, but the video was done in Halle (Germany).
To stay organized, mind maps and a sketched storyboard with all the shots were used. Due to limited budged, we also had to borrow most of the equipment from all around and make costumes from what we already had/ cheap second hand options.
Oct 2023 - ongoing
Participants
Lucy Cara Dökel
Nico Schander
Willi Preuk
Franz Schwill, Martin Nebelung, Jakob Weber, Lino Kjell, Charlene Ribbecke, Vanessa Voigt, Tilmann Schanze, Gregor Josef Ziehme, Anne Wackwitz, Lena Wetzel
My Role
Director
Post Production
Camera assistance
Concept, Shot plan and Organization
Costume
