case study
videography
Who
What
"Kilos" - music video
How
Southend based, critically acclaimed actor, spoken word artist and grime emcee Sonny Green worked with Renegade Production's producer and composer Ciaran "Muad'Dib" O'Fathaigh on his then brand new single Kilos. Lyrically, the record played heavily on presumptions, stereotypical misconceptions and deliberate misrepresentations. Sonny and his team needed a story-driven video that brought the record and its counter narrative concepts to life.
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Popularity for rap/drill/grime artists in youth culture often relies on building a mythology of being a gangster or “roadman”. Perhaps due to plenty of turbulence in his own past as well as a background in working with young people in his community, Sonny Green is able to move fluidly between personas without ever becoming inauthentic.
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Green always felt that he was "... addressing that thing where I feel people are too bait with what they’re saying in their music all the time and it’s quite nice to just deny everything … I dunno why everyone’s so hardcore about … stuff”.
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“We chose Catford [for the video location] mainly due to Renegade’s links in and around the area … I think it worked perfectly”.
Outcomes
We worked with Sonny to carve out a definitive plot and situate the main protagonist in an ultimately unexpected way, laying the foundations for suspension ahead of a twist.
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We utilised our relationships with people and local businesses in our local area for the use of some fantastic and dynamic locations, in particular local cinema and community hub Catford Mews and Afro-Caribbean barber shop Street Flava.
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Sonny grew up on the Kursal Estate in Southend, and when we visited ahead of the shoot, it reminded us so much of Milford Towers which is a huge part of Catford's landscape, so it made so much sense to us to shoot as much of the video there as possible.
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As well as working with Sonny on concept and plot, we handled casting, location management, costume design, screenplay and shot-lists and post-production in order to create a taught, plot-driven video that truly lifted and framed the original record, leaning heavily on our local, brutalist architecture landmarks and community hotspots.
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A few years later, Ed Sheeran's team had very similar ideas about Catford Shopping Centre and went on to shoot the music video to "Bad Habits" using some of the exact locations that we used.