“We shot the entire project on the Phantom Flex. I love the distinctive look of the camera and playing around with the high-speed function of the camera and extreme slow motion and real-time photography.” – Kyle Lewis
The evolution of a man from the time they discover their purpose, to seeing a visual exhibition being captured through the lens of a camera is an amazing craft. Award-winning hip hop artist Nasty C gave this challenge to Kyle Lewis and the results were an Apple Music chart-topping video which gained global creative recognition.
“The concept comes from personal stories and experiences that Nasty C explained to me about his personal growth and life experiences. The narrative has a past, present and future and that illustrates Nasty C growing up, figuring things out and ultimately coming to fruition in his career,” says director Kyle Lewis.
The 14-minute music video features three songs from his Bad Hair Extensions album namely, Don’t Do It, Phases and Good Girls and Snapchat Hoes. The video’s unofficial title is Veliswa, and is named after the rapper’s late mother. However in keeping with the album title, it was later named Bad Hair.
Lewis and his Arcade Content team previously worked with Nasty C during the shooting of Anatii and Cassper Nyovest’s music video for the song Jump, which the rapper featured on. It was at that shoot that they spoke about collaborating on something totally unique.
“Audiences love to be challenged, and I find the South African audience to be an extremely intelligent and deep-thinking crowd. There are so many subtle, nuanced messages and statements scattered throughout and I wanted it to be something that people watched a few times to decipher, but at the same time create their own meaning,” says Lewis.
Lewis remembers that in that brief meeting the rapper spoke about featuring multiple singles but giving him and his team free reign on the narrative and look. “For a filmmaker, it’s amazing to have that kind of trust from an artist.”
Kyle and his team, which included Pierre De Villiers on camera duties, Kaley Meyer as the stylist and Bianca Prinsloo taking over the art direction; worked on conceptualising the brief and finding complementary tools needed in the making of the film. “Life experiences are never the same, so I wanted to illustrate different tones of emotions individually. I wanted dark, surrealistic elements to be juxtaposed with hyper-realism and grit,” explains Lewis.
Furthermore Lewis wanted to treat each of the three tracks as its own individual film, but still be able to make them co-exist as a 14-minute long music video without losing the viewer. The use of bridges in between the songs provide a smooth transition, which Lewis credits to approaching the filmmaking process as a ‘trilogy’ or ‘anthology’ instead of just a conventional narrative. “Each film has its own style of cinematography and framing. With the help of my incredible DOP, Pierre De Villiers, we were able to innovate with how we lit and composed shots. For example, in the final video, Phases, we locked off the camera and did every set up in the same framing, creating an interesting editing technique,” Lewis comments.
De Villiers shot the video on the Phantom Flex with 2+3 Post handling the edit and grade, helmed by long-time collaborator Stephen Du Plessis. “I love the distinctive look of the camera and playing around with the high-speed function and extreme slow motion and real-time photography,” comments Lewis on the camera choice. “I wanted each shot to look like a Renaissance painting and to be as poignant, and there’s something beautiful and eerie about what that camera can capture.”
While he admits that budget constraints are always a factor in producing a sterling film, Lewis and his team are always up for an opportunity to create an unfiltered and artistically creative product that will be worthwhile for the masses. The team however tried to push as many boundaries as they could through the use of creative special effects with the help of SFX artist, Blake Prinsloo from Static Black Media. “The most exciting aspect is the face mapping we did of Nasty C. It gave us the perfect impression of his face, which gave us the opportunity to create artistic, statue-like elements,” Lewis remarks.
The music video has since been featured internationally in France, Germany, United Kingdom and the US, with Apple Music describing it as “epic” and “audacious”.
When Lewis was asked if he ever thought that his films would be so highly-received, he responded: “I think South African music and South African aesthetics are some of the most bold and creative in the world. I was just a vehicle for its success; the true impact comes from the people, fashion and collaboration in this piece. I believe we are as a country the next big innovators and it’s finally getting noticed abroad, which is exciting.”
Key Crew:
Director: Kyle Lewis
Producer: William Nicholson
DOP: Pierre De Villiers
Styling and make-up: Kaley Meyer
Art director: Bianca Prinsloo
Editor: Stephen du Plesis
VFX: Blake Prinsloo
Additional music: Tapiwa Musvosvi
DiT and Camera technician: Karl Schmidt
