Reminiscing: Powertools by King Khamen

Few things beat collaborating with my friend and hip-hop artist King Khamen.

The truth of both our arts is expressed freely with as few limitations as we can impose on ourselves.

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This usually becomes using very limited gear and finding the expression in the moment. Experimentation. Flow.

The result is usually somewhere closer to the artistic intention of the moment.

We took inspiration from the beautiful black and white look in movies like Akira Kurosawa’s High & Low, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker and the black and white sections of Wong Kar-Wai’s Fallen Angels.

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For the sped-up sequences we we’re inspired by Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man.

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In our second collaboration with King Khamen we wanted to explore the explosiveness and intensity in his music. We captured its rawness in this experimental music video that makes use of low-quality equipment to put the listener in the headspace of the track.

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It was nice to read an editor at PromoNews.TV say

Leonardo Verkoelen speeds through the streets in perennially effective time-lapse mode to capture King Khamen performing his banger Powertools in a gritty old school style.

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On our YouTube channel we broke down the process of achieving the grungy look in After Effects and Davinci Resolve.

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We shot the project with a Canon 60D without a lens attached to the body. We used mouldy Minolta Lenses from the 70s by focusing them manually in front of the body while shooting handheld.

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We knew how much we could achieve inside compositing and we had a strong reference of the look we were after. This meant we could trust on our instincts and let the equipment capture the image.

For my work in VFX-compositing I use a variety of film grains and digital noises to match assets with their backplate.

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The noise used in Powertools can be found in the Free Digital Camera Noise pack, and includes an After Affects Grain Control set-up.

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Finally, I’d like to have a look at some stills photographed on the day of shooting :)

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1. King Khamen 'Powertools' by Leonardo Verkoelen — promonews.tv