Music videos are often just recordings of the music artist(s) performing their song, but the ones that truly stand out tell a compelling visual story that compliments the music. If you’re looking for a team that can create a treatment, find the right actors, and produce an attention getting piece you’ve found the right company.
Climate Crisis was written to hammer home this reality. The song is both a protest against the excuses not to act & a raw & hopeful call to action. George Malcolm Johnson, the band’s founder & lyricist, wrote the song while immersed in wildfire smoke in Kamloops, B.C. in the summer of 2021. A certain political party’s denial of climate change aroused him to anger & the lyrics & a tune came quite quickly. His then 15-year old activist son Ben composed the music in his bedroom & recorded the first version using a computer program. “Climate Crisis” is one of the songs featured in Johnson’s award-winning eco-comedy, Boomerangst.
‘Til We’re Dirt was about raw, emotional, country “grit”. For this video, Melissa Endean will takes the viewer on an emotional journey as we tell the dysfunctional and heart-wrenching love story of two women who stay committed in their love to one another, despite grappling with their personal demons. The video is full of symbolic imagery that brings to life a forgotten era while maintaining a sense of classic timelessness that can only be achieved through a raw country music song.
The treatment and visual story called for a couple of scenes to happen on a railway track but, for obvious reasons, we were unable to secure permission so we did the next best thing. We created railway tracks and a train in Unreal engine 5 and filmed those scenes on green screen – making it happen with some quick VFX work on an impossible budget.
It’s not only music artists that like the idea of putting out a music video! When the Association of BC Land Surveyors needed a video that would help them show high school students all about a profession as a Land Surveyor they came to Mastermind Studios with the request. They wanted to show the history of how the industry has progressed over the last hundred years as well as the modern advancements and technology that is used today.
With the gracious support of Said The Whale who rewrote and recorded a special version of “B.C. Orienteering” and changed it into “B.C. Surveying” Mastermind Studios created a music video that captured everything the Association of BC Land Surveyors was looking for, including a whole new generation of new recruits to the profession.
Sometimes you just need to pull on some heart strings and there is nothing like a good story and some great music to get the job done right.
The Big Bear Child and Youth Advocacy Centre worked with Mastermind Studios and six amazing soloists to create awareness around child abuse and the Child & Youth Advocacy (CYAC) movement.
This was part of the 5th annual Bright Lights for Children & Youth Event and the singing of We Are The World, We Are The Children, at the Kamloops Blazer’s game that night was to encourage donations that go towards operations and programming to support children and youth that have experienced abuse.
Sometimes it just as simple as needing a fun catchy advertisement that’s not the same old boring commercial approach. That’s why Harley-Davidson Kamloops asked us to create a music video style commercial to make people aware that they didn’t just sell motorcycles. They also stock a full line of apparel and accessories.
In this case we found some music that fit the vibe we were after and planned an exciting shoot with some great looking actors, along with haze & smoke machines, some carefully placed colorful lighting and a lot of carefully planned shots filled with energy that looked as good as the music, and motorcycles, sounded.
Digital media and storytelling is one of the fastest growing industries in the world; however, in this vast and ever-expanding industry, the perspectives and experiences of Indigenous communities remain overlooked. Invisibility of Indigenous communities is maintained by systemic failings to provide accessible, equitable, sustainable opportunities to share and produce their own stories within the film industry.
Through his journey KASP, an Indigenous music artist & at-risk-youth worker, shows the likeness between Hip Hop & First Nations cultures. He explores the hope for these two cultures to thrive together along with how to learn from, & have respect for, each other.
Mastermind Studios funded more than half of this production and created this music video for KASP along with additional funding support being provided by Telus Storyhive.