Self

I was asked to create a visual for Gio's new freestyle "Self". I wasn't sure what I wanted to do exactly, but I knew that I wanted to challenge myself.

After some thinking, I decided I wanted to take a trip into Gio's mind. I completed this by creating a "bedroom" on a roof overlooking the city. The scene would be filled with practical lights, books, clothes, a record player, and more items you'd find in his room. Behind Gio, on the left third sits a grand frame with a video depicting his "mind" projected on it.

This project took a lot of brain power and friends to complete, I really had no clue how to make this come to life. So, I asked two lovely people (Chase and Matt) to help me out. We conceptualized, then conducted a test shoot. This was the first time I'd ever done a proper test shoot, and it was so beneficial. It saved us lots of time and prevented unwanted stress on the day of the shoot.

Immediately after we cleaned up the test shoot Gio randomly sent me a new song of his. Chase and I listened and fell in love with it. Originally, this whole scene/set was for a different song he'd sent me a week prior. But once we heard the new song we knew we had to redo all of this work and adjust accordingly. So, that's what we did. Luckily, nothing had to change except the projected video. Gio and I were able to reshoot that the day of the shoot, took a little while, but we were able to get it all done.

Looking back on this, I wish we'd added some more light to help separate Gio from the rest of the scene. It was my intention to have this scene be dark and moody, but I think we let it get a little too dark. This could've been resolved by possibly adding a softbox (or something adjacent) above him. This was my first time truly diving into lighting. I'm quite proud of myself, Chase, and Matt. I hope to take these new skills and tools with me into my future projects.

Here are some images from the process and the final video: