How we made this music video
Producing music videos during the Covid pandemic was a bit like cooking with half the ingredients missing—you had to get creative, or go hungry. I ended up doing it three times, and with each attempt the projects got braver, stranger, and more ambitious.
This one, though? This might just be my favourite. Not only because of the final result, but because of the inspiration (and a few happy accidents) that shaped it.
The Problem: Filming in Lockdown
Ah, 2021. Remember it? bad haircuts, scheduled outside time and, if you worked in video production, an endless headache. At the time, I was in Essex while soul singer Nate James was over 300 miles away in Stirling, Scotland. Not exactly a quick hop on the train.
Filming him in person for his latest single was impossible. But here’s the thing: I really wanted Nate on camera. And with Nate being many things (MOBO-nominated artist, soulful powerhouse, all-round lovely bloke) but not a filmmaker, I had to get creative.
The song
Nate’s song 1Kind is brimming with lyrical imagery—it’s his very own What’s Going On moment.
The track digs into humanity’s big flaw: we just don’t seem to get along. Wars of opinion, battles over ethnicity, clashes about sexuality—it’s all there. But as Nate so eloquently puts it: underneath it all, we’re the same. We are, quite literally, one kind.
Although written years earlier, the release landed in 2021—right in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and the global outrage following the murder of George Floyd. Suddenly, this song wasn’t just relevant, it was urgent.
That gave me a lot of emotional material to work with. Dark, thought-provoking visuals were a given. But I still needed Nate’s face in the frame.
The inspiration
Two of my all-time favourite music videos became my guide:
- Godley & Creme’s Cry – a simple close-up performance, multiple faces morphing seamlessly into one another. Remember, this was pre-digital, and they still nailed it.
- Sinéad O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U – directed by John Maybury, stripped back, minimal, and utterly devastating the moment Sinéad tears up on camera.
Later, John Landis used similar morphing effects (digitally, this time) for
Michael Jackson’s Black or White.
I wanted to fuse all of these influences into Nate’s video—keeping the raw emotion front and centre while using face-morphing to amplify the message.
The DIY technique
So, how do you film a professional-looking music video from a bedroom in Stirling with only a smartphone, a bed, and a very patient partner?
Here’s the hack:
- Nate lay on a black sheet wearing a black top.
- His partner, Gerad, held the phone directly above him.
- The secret sauce? Don’t move the camera. At all. Not even a sneeze.
It took a few tries (the lighting nearly drove us mad—daylight and domestic lamps aren’t exactly cinematic), but we managed to get the raw performance footage I needed.
The edit
In post-production, I mixed Nate’s footage with carefully chosen stock video that reflected the song’s themes. During the chorus, I layered in those face-morphing effects pioneered by Godley & Creme.
And that opening in black and white? That wasn’t just artsy flair—it was a sneaky way to hide the less-than-perfect lighting we had on Nate’s takes. Sometimes necessity is the mother of… clever fixes.
The result
What we ended up with was a music video that looked intentional, emotional, and powerful—despite the constraints of filming during lockdown. Nate’s performance, combined with the morphing effects, brought the song’s central message to life.
I'm passionate about making memorable videos that bring the music to life. Sometimes that needs a little money, sometimes it can be done on a very tight budget and often.
Oh and I revel in a challenge. This was certainly that.
