A music video has been floating around the web for a while now, which shows a singer being "magically" transformed inside a fake image-editing program into a "more glamorous" version of herself. The "Nouveau Parfum" video from musician Boggie has produced countless conversations about the unrealistic image of women in the media, but many have been wondering, just how was it created? Co.Create sat down with the directors of the video to discuss what it took to make the video -- which included four months of post-production.
This is the official music video for Boggie's "Nouveau Parfum":
And if you didn't think that seemed like a lot of work, this is the Hungarian version of the song and video, with key parts obviously needing to be done over again:
Here's what Bálint Nagy, one of the two directors of the video (the other being Nándor Lőrincz), had to say about the process to Co.Create:
Once the concept was ironed out and the pre-production was fully completed, the rest of the process was a combination of working quickly and fastidiously. “The shoot was really short,” he says. “We had to make four different set-ups of lighting and make-up. So all the phases of ‘beautifying’ were created on-set, by the different lighting, make-up, and hair styles. Then it was the post-production’s duty to work together all these shots.”
Nagy says that the process of stitching all of this together in post took four months. “We had to make plenty of tests for each trick and transition,” he says. “We had to synchronize all of the different shots, and track them together. Afterward, we had to animate all the transitions on the face, create the fake graphic interface, the mouse movements, etc.”
And about what the video means to them:
“Beyond beautifying and Photoshopping, both the video and the song is about accepting our real values,” he says. “We live in a time of multiple crises of value, so it’s important to at least ask ourselves about our real values. Our goal was to show a bad example in the video, hoping it will generate personal answers in the viewer.”
While the post-production process was very long, it's interesting that so much of what you're seeing was actually created on set, with the fake Photoshop program and the transitions added in post. The four different setups were combined in After Effects by the Hungarian VFX group Studio Lamb.
There are a lot of conversations happening now about the way people -- especially women -- are portrayed in the advertising and entertainment industries, and while much of the editing is happening in photographs, there is still quite a bit of it in video. A ton of 'beautifying' is added to all sorts of videos on a daily basis, so while the video may seem like an extreme example (and it was made to be), it's not as far from the truth as you might think.
Head on over to Co.Create to read the rest of their interview with the directors.
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