Khaled and Rihanna.
They felt incredible in this scene because it was real.
All these people around them were 100%, authentic, so excited to be there.
It wasn't just like this fake, "All right, and action.
Let's start dancing, let's start ..." No, it was like, "Action ... live life.”
Khaled hit me up.
I was in LA.
He was like, "I need you to come to the house tonight."
"I need you to come hear this record."
Really excited about this, love Rihanna, love this track.
He's like, "Well, here's the catch."
"We gotta shoot in five days in Miami."
The thing is, the song wasn't finished yet.
So, I couldn't take the song home and listen to it, and marinate it like I usually do.
I have a process.
I went home and I was trying to remember what the song sounded like.
So, I pull up the original.
I definitely was very inspired by the aesthetic of the original video.
And, I wanted to infuse that right into this one.
So, I basically was listening to that song, while I wrote this treatment.
You know this was just the best way to start off this entire video.
Because, you get extreme hype levels from Khaled.
Calling his shots to his team, making sure the shot looks right.
But, this whole time he's got baby Asahd in his arms.
Khaled had a plan with Asahd since the beginning.
And this is just like you know, step one of the master plan.
So it's definitely a very iconic shot right here.
This is a great little party scene right here.
Definitely a lot of local talent.
A lot of local dancers from Little Haiti, great talent through Miami.
This is the definition of movie magic because every single person right here had been here
since four in the afternoon.
Everybody was being held in this kind of youth center while we were shooting all of our other
scenes.
That was kind of where our talent holding was.
But the coolest part is, they were dancing the entire time.
Everyone was just hyped to be there.
It was great energy.
So, by the time 4AM hit and it was their time to shine on camera, I mean they couldn't have
been more ready.
What screams island vibe, is this kind of deep teal.
And, the right amount of sodium, and the right amount of pinks, and browns.
It's just really about capturing that right skin tone that works perfect and just fill
in little details without making it too brightly lit because that just takes away the cinematic
feel of it all.
Working with Rihanna was amazing.
She's one of those performers where she takes direction so well.
And will take in the scene that you've created for her, and be able to really work off of
it in such a natural way.
So once I got Rihanna on set.
It was the type of thing that I had to be so precise with the shots that I got.
To where, literally every single one of these takes was pretty much one take.
This is the first scene that I got to shoot with Rihanna of the entire day.
We built this set inside of a little theater at this youth center.
This is all custom paint job.
All custom ivy coming down.
My goal for this scene ... this is actually lit by one source.
So, there's just one overhead source on this entire set.
So, literally Rihanna would go in and out of this light.
But there's not many females that can do that.
And be okay with the idea that there's only one source in there, and they're not being
blasted by light.
But she's so beautiful, her complexion can really stand up to anything.
How the color of her dress, the color of the bed.
All of this is so color coordinated and gorgeous.
Kind of paying homage to the original.
Where there was a love interest in this cement room.
It was like you just kind of felt this angelic vibe.
I love this scene with Bryson.
It's only lit by one light outside.
We shot this at like two in the morning when everybody was asleep in their apartment.
So, literally we had to be so quiet.
He was literally singing to this off of an iPhone.
My intention here was to be able to push back as far as possible in the hallway here, and
make him small in frame, silhouetted to where there's this perfect silhouette frame right
here.
I think it was really able to give us an incredibly strong image.
Especially on the wide of this shot.
A big part of this piece was just the feeling.
In order to create that feeling it was through colors, it was through the right cinematography.
It was making sure this entire world just felt very authentic.
The thing with this record and video's success was the fact that it felt so relatable.
It felt like everybody can move, everybody can dance to it.
This is one of those things that you could watch it, and you could feel like you were
part of it.
It was like an all inclusive thing.
I feel like it was such a great experience for everybody involved, that there was just
kind of no way it could fail.
I mean, honestly we probably have a solid hour of Khaled dancing.
There was so many different moves to choose from in the edit.
To where, me and my editor Vinny were just like, "Yo, we can make an entire video out
of this right here."
Maybe we will someday.
That would be fun.