In DEHNOE's own words, "No specific sound or genre, just a bit of whatever I'm having fun making!". The biggest challenge was creating a visual as experimental as the music itself, which also happened to be the best part too.
Pre-Production
- Meetings
- Conceptualisation
- Shotlist
- Planning
- Recce
Production
- Videography
- Direction
- Equipment Rental
Post-Production
- Editing (Online/Offline)
- Cataloguing
- Motion Graphics
- VFX
- Colour Grading
This project was the result of right place, right time.
We had a larger inventory of equipment available to us due to another project we were working on and DEHNOE had approached us with two things, an upcoming album and a desire to create a music video for a song from the album.
A couple of weeks prior, we had an opporunity to hear a handful of songs that were contested to be turned into a music video. We settled on two finalists and the chosen track was the result of a stubborn director knowing which one would serve best as a blank canvas to create with.
While we didn't have a concrete story line/sequence going into the production, we did have some things very much concrete:
- 4 Locations
- 4 Emotions
- 4 Visual Effects
- 1 DEHNOE
The locations were chosen intentionally to have a noticeable contrast between them, an endless green space, a busy cityscape, a purgatory-like oceanside road and an abandonded power plant. In the editing stages, we further exaggerated this by doing a unique colour grade for each location that leant pretty heavily on a specific tint/white balance (cool-warm & green-purple).
While colour grades are usually created to tie footage together, we wanted each location to stand out.
While we hadn't planned specific actions & shots at each location, we knew exactly the emotional journey we wanted DEHNOE to take the viewer on throughout the video. How much to improvise during a shoot is a really tricky balance, because what can feel fun/intentional on the day can be difficult to strike a chord in the editing room.
We managed this by laying out rules for the visuals & performance very early and then let the music and the locations do the rest of the work.
While the whole project is a little artsy/abstract, we did our best to keep it entertaining with visual effects throughout, balancing a slow buildup in intensity with leaks of chaos, all the while following the pace and mood of the music track itself.
It's been over a year since this video has gone live, and since then we've been very lucky to have it nominated for a handful of awards. It was an amazing experience attending HMVA 2025 in Hollywood and being in a space with so many giants in the industry. And an equally amazing experience attending SXSW Sydney 2025 and seeing our video played alongside so many other talented creators.
