E.N.V Music Video Shoot

We headed up to London in late January to shoot the new video for rising rapper/singer E.N.V, in a storage facility and warehouse location with Canary Wharf overlooking. Both locations were used in the new James McAvoy film and are soon to be seen in the next Fast and the Furious instalment.

The narrative part of the video featured the fantastic Libby Gore as the mysterious woman and opens with E.N.V on the run, from someone or something and in a panic. He stops and sees the woman, dressed in white, calming and reassuring, she beckons him – to safety? He hopes and follows her.

His journey leads him into a space from which he cannot escape and becomes eaten by fear and worry. The woman doesn’t seem to benevolent at this point, taunting and insulting him. He overcomes his fears and asserts that he isn’t afraid and escapes this mental prison.

The narrative shoot was full of running around from all of us, which held off the cold winter air. We shot again with the Canon 5D and used a glidetrack to help stabilize the shots, rather than just going handheld. We wanted an action film style to the running shots for E.N.V and a strong juxtaposition on Libby’s shots, with a calmer, steadier feel to them. We used natural light whilst outside and in the warehouse, thanks to its overhead skylights created enough light to shoot in whilst retaining a grimy look to the scenes.

The darker scenes of the narrative were shot in a spray-painted container set which was restricting and tight to shoot in and we used a Rotolight to illuminate our subjects and create a really dark, moody look in which they could disappear into and out of the darkness.

For the performance, we wanted to maintain a moody feel but give more light to them so used some Sachtler reporter lights which gave us enough power to light the scene without swamping it. Additional atmosphere came from a smoke machine and candles on the piano and for the non-piano based performance shots, strobe lights which reacted to the song beat and changed colour.

The video is heavily graded to give a different look to each section of it and moves along at a quick pace, keeping in flow with E.N.V’s rap and the narrative requirements.

Take a look at the video here - http://www.silvertipfilms.co.uk/portfolio/music-videos/env1/