Music videos have the ability to paint a picture of an artist, their feelings, and the stories they aim to to tell in an uncanny way. This is certainly the case for Baby Keem’s “no sense” music video. Contemplative with a touch of gloom, the video brings the rapper’s sonic narrative to life with artful abandon.
Directed by Savannah Setten and produced in collaboration with Cineburó and Kendrick Lamar’s recently launched collective pgLang, the project was a creative journey from start to finish. With a creative brief that included phrases such as brutalist, concrete, high-rises, and over-populated, the job was a fusion of a specific vision and a willingness to explore the boundaries of visual storytelling.
Like any other shoot, there was no shortage of hurdles to climb—especially with such a distinct vision in mind. “It was a very ambitious shoot, we had around 47 shots that we had to get through in a single day, two locations along with aerial shots. In order to pull it off, we created a series of performance sequences between the actors and the camera with Savannah in order to pick up at least two or three shots within that same take. One of these sequences was the scene in which Keem moves between almost 30 parked cars, which were organized in a very specific color palette which was based on a drawn sketch made by Gerardo, the art director, and executed by the head of Picture Cars, to later make the final adjustments based on where our camera would pass by,” said 1st AD, Osvaldo “Chozz” Montaño.
Executive Producer Danny Goodman had similar stories of tenacity and determination to share. “The difficulties were in finding two key locations: a cluster of high-rise apartments open to filming during Covid that fit the profile of the director, and a parking structure that had brutalist design and that allowed for only one company move during our single shoot day.” The search for the perfect location turned out to be a success—from the mind-bending high-rise to the punctuated parking structure, each location gives way to a finished product that’s anything but ordinary.
