YNG Martyr “YNG”
When Melbourne-based rapper YNG Martyr was looking for a location to film his new music video, Director Josh Davis struck gold when he found Stupid Old Studios.
Image courtesy of Studio Supernatural
Making Music Videos for an Online Audience
YNG Martyr found his audience online during the pandemic, making a name for himself with his track Nike Ticks which blew up on social media.
Josh Davis of Studio Supernatural has been making videos with YNG Martyr since 2020.
From low-budget run-and-gun style music video making, to more epic videos Davie’s says that modern music video making for an artist like YNG Martyr is a balance of creative vision, and hooking into trends.
“ When I first started doing music videos, you look at it as mostly just a creative piece… it's always about the idea and it's always about the cinematography,” says Davis
“ We've definitely started to look at the types of videos and the types of visual trends that people are latching on to [and] what kind of videos can we cut down into little pieces for TikTok and Instagram that are going to perform.”
Simple with Scale
For YNG Martyr’s latest track YNG, Davis said the concept was simple and intended to let the performer’s energy and showmanship, shine.
“ The song's called YNG. So it's all about that lifestyle. We wanted to sell that concept without literally selling it and making it feel a bit pretentious,” says Davis.
The video concept was initially one-take with YNG Martyr’s performance and lighting design doing the heavy lifting.
Enter, Stupid Old Studios.
With our 200sqm floor area, Davis was able to capture the full scale of the production in a single shot providing him the scale he needed to sell his concept.
Our LED video walls then provided Davis with the backdrop he needed, including the ability to time the video alongside music and lighting states.
“ We were really sold when we were looking around at different studios when we saw your screen.
“ Even just the shape of it and being able to kind of frame it all in one shot, it all kind of fell into place perfectly. And it validated the kind of throwing the lyrics up on the back and using the screen as well as a lighting source, which was definitely something that we thought about the entire time.”
Light and Dark
Davis said there were two other key elements of Stupid Old Studios that saved them both time and money in the production.
Our lighting grid allowed them to reduce the number of their own lights they had to bring in. A mix of key lights and moving lights in our grid meant they could achieve the theatrical look they were after.
Davis worked with our Managing Director Evan Munro-Smith to pre-program lighting states that was then handed over to their crew.
“ Evan was awesome. Once he had it all set up for us, we were just like smooth sailing, not a single hiccup.”
Our fully blacked out space also gave the team full control of the look of the video.
“The black space is such a big head start because it gives you that complete blank slate.
“We can completely control every light source and not have to worry about any kind of spillage coming from anywhere or [light] bouncing. [For] something like this [video] you want that dark baseline…to build up from.”
Our Services
For YNG Martyr’s new video Stupid Old Studios provided
Half day studio hire
LED video wall hire
Lighting grid hire
Technical support including
Bringing the client’s video into Resolume for play out on our LED video wall
Patching the client’s own lighting into our system
Programming pre-set lighting that was controlled by the client
You can check out YNG Martyr’s video for YNG below.