Xin Zhu’s Music Video for “Siren”
Now, we at Spirinity are no strangers to long shoot days, multiple set locations, and plenty of travel, but have you ever visited the desert, beach, an inner-city graffiti wall, and an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of a town all in one day?! Welcome to our shoot for Xin Zhu’s “Siren”! We’ve always loved novel experiences and new challenges, and for this video production we not only blended a variety visuals and locales, but also musical genres and video styles. We had always wanted to do a K-pop, hip-hop infused music video, and with Xin Zhu we were finally able to make that happen! To accomplish all this, we brought in one of our favorite choreographers, Kedua, and a crew of incredible female dancers.
When we were approached about doing video production for “Siren,” we had about three weeks to finalize the concept, cast, rehearsals, shoots and edits for the video before Xin Zhu was traveling back to China! In this particular case, time was our most precious commodity. So we got right to work! With the time crunch, we knew we would only have one day for actual shooting. Xin Zhu wanted to film in three completely different locations, so we knew it would have to be a long day, but our crew is always up for a real challenge! But we also had to be sure the additional cast dancers we hired were gifted, not only with incredible talent, but also with undaunted stamina!
We began the day at 4:00am caravanning to the sun-rise sand-wastes of the So-Cal deserts. Part of our caravan included a beautiful Mercedes-Benz G-500 and 2018 Bentley, both featured in the music video. The first half of the day we spent in the desert, dancing, setting off colored smoke bombs, and driving the cars in the cracked curvatures of a dried lakebed. Sure, we almost melted in over 100 degree weather, but it was totally worth it!
After a much-needed lunch-retreat at our favorite desert restaurant, we headed straight to the beach! The breeze and cool water were more than refreshing, after a hot summer morning and afternoon in the desert. We appreciate that about California—there’s so much diversity in locations! It’s not a surprise that this is where the film industry truly took off so many years ago. One of our favorite shots of the day was taken here on top of the cliff by our drone pilot, when he circled the girls with the sunset in the background. It was hard to leave the beach, as it always is! But, alas, it was time to head to the warehouse and graffiti wall.
For this video production we wanted each location to have a completely different vibe, so Lauren and the dancers changed outfits. We set up the G-Wagon with fog, as well as colored and Quasar lights. After more choreography and song run-throughs, we moved on to the graffiti wall location.
After the long shoot-day, we were off to the editing bay. Again, time was precious! We wanted to keep the edit fast paced to match the song. Thankfully Xin Zhu brought the heat all day, refusing to lose focus or energy through it all. And the dancers were flawlessly consistent in the choreography and energy at each location, so it made our job that much easier!
We appreciate the positive feedback for this video, including the over one million views in China! Our team enjoyed the culmination of different scenery all throughout California, with absolutely amazing dancers and choreography with a killer K-pop artist and rapper, Xin Zhu!
We hope you enjoyed learning more about the “behind the scenes” aspect of this video. If you liked it, we invite you to view our other work:
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