Red Bull
S10 Uncut
Concept & Content

Red Bull & S10 approached Circus Family to come up with a concept for her upcoming Red Bull Uncut performance. Uncut is a performance series from Red Bull Music Studios. Shot in just one take, an artist performs a track but provides an unexpected twist. When hearing the songs and seeing the intensity in which S10 performs we decided the supporting visuals needed to feel as an inner journey through her mind. S10 touches people with her lyrics that are about her mental health and personal experiences/growth. We wanted to capture that fragility and her inner thoughts within the visuals.

CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT
In some of S10 her music videos nature and water play a significant role. The imagery is often dreamy and poetic and represents a reflection of her lyrics, inner world and life experiences. Combining all the ingredients we came up with the idea that as the performance progresses our camera slowly zooms out in a linear pace and rotates to make a full 360 at the end of the video. Also the content which we project rotates at exactly the same speed in the opposite direction as we move out so you have the feeling that S10 her performance and musicians rotate while the content remains intact.  A very calm and dreamlike movement in line with her performance. A beautiful and intriguing recording that stands out supporting S10 as a unique artist while underlining the vision of Red Bull Music Studios and the Uncut series. By projecting over the full set we literally submerge the artist and her band into her dreamworld.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT
Having the one take recording as a starting point creates limitations but also forces you to think differently visually. Where a lot of music videos are based on very fast cut edits with this concept we go back to the basis: the quality of the artist first. Using projections in whcih we submerge the artists we could place them in their world without editing. To match the mood of her tracks and earlier music videos we decided to use a lot of nature oriented footage and play with their colours to make them even more moody. Also adding to this visual atmosphere is the large studio like setting in a former church.

TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT
Circus Family developed a bespoke system that with the push of a button starts the automated movement of the camera, the start of the projection and the 360 degree rotation of the content. This way the conceptual elements are always in sync so the focus could be on the artists and the quality of the one take recording. One of the most important aspects was that audio quality of the recording. This is why we decided to shoot in Studio 150 Bethlehemkerk, a recently renovated church that is optimised as a concerthall and for sound recording.