I Made a Music Video in Amsterdam

Ever listen to music and imagine you’re in a music video? 💭 That’s what I knew I wanted my next project to be during my time in the Netherlands this year. I thought of the concept a couple of months before leaving for my trip to the Netherlands and I even contacted 3 Moons Productions again to collaborate on this project. Since this was my 5th time to the Netherlands, I knew I had to make something special to celebrate. I had always wanted to make a dance video in Amsterdam, and when I found out about the Upside Down Museum, I knew I also wanted to shoot there.

I first thought of 5 songs that I had always wanted to dance to: Mon BB, Con Calma, Spaceship, Loco and The Way We Do This. Then I got one of my DJ friends to mix them all together for me. Mon BB by Pheno Ambro is probably one of my favourite Afrobeats songs. Listening to it always makes me feel so happy and free and want to burst out dancing. And what better place to do it than down a beautiful street in Amsterdam! So that’s where we shot the first song. It was actually the last song we shot that day. I even borrowed 3 Moons’ coat and bucket hat to give it an outfit change (something I didn’t actually plan on doing). Another fun fact, the whole intro and outro of this video wasn’t in the original concept, but we thought of the idea last minute and I think it made the video even better!

The first part of the video was the simple type of video you would expect from me - just me and a beautiful shot of the city. But moving on to the next song, that’s where things got more exciting.

Con Calma by Daddy Yankee was a Reggaeton song I knew I needed to include in the mashup. When I first heard it, I knew I wanted to dance to it, but never got the chance to except for in my Zumba classes. So now was the time! I definitely couldn’t have had a better location for this (and I swear the outfit matching the Mondriaan room was purely coincidental!) I had picked out the outfit beforehand and planned to just shoot in front of the entrance of the museum (the upside down smiley face). But because of the colours, I knew it would be a missed opportunity if I didn’t also shoot in the Mondriaan room. I’m so glad there weren’t many people in the museum at that time because we basically had the whole room to ourselves!

I chose the next song, Spaceship, because I knew I needed at least one Sean Paul song in the mix. This one just happened to be at the top of my playlist at that time. The room we chose to shoot this song in made me soooooo dizzy, I almost didn’t go through with it. But as you can see, it looked way too cool to pass up. The blue room, or the Royal Room as they called it, felt like a nice contrast to the spiny room, so we shot in both.

The next song, Loco by Yung Felix, was a Dutch song I listened to so much back when I first lived in the Netherlands, and I had even wanted to make a video on it back in the day. I knew now was my chance. Loved that the museum had a Dutch metro room that felt somewhat fitting for this song. And I guess the private jet isn’t a “locomotief,” but close enough! I just wanted an excuse to dance in it haha.

And finally, we have The Way We Do This by Ape Drums feat. Major Lazer and Busy Signal. Whenever I listen to this song, I always imagine that there’s some kind of rave going on inside of my head haha. So that’s what I tried to capture in the edit. It was definitely the most fun to edit and I had a hard time choosing what to put in the final cut. All the footage we had was so good! We shot in pretty much every room in the museum and I had hours of footage to go through. Not everything made it in the final cut, but that’s ok. I’m really happy with the way it turned out.

After getting to picture lock in Premiere Pro, I started tinkering in After Effects to give it that extra oomph. I learned some new transitions and had fun discovering new ways to bring the video to life. Last step was colour correction and of course, I did it all in DaVinci Resolve. My proudest moment was turning a very gray sky into a blue one haha.

There were quite a few setbacks for this shoot to be honest. We had to deal with the museum almost not letting us film inside, and then file transferring in a cafe that didn’t have working outlets, so 3 Moons’ computer almost ran out of battery before we could transfer everything to my hard drive! On top of all that, I really pulled my back a week before and wasn’t sure I could move at all. But somehow, being in front of the camera made all the pain go away haha. So after all we went through, I’m so proud of what we accomplished and I can say that this is probably my best project so far (also you can watch in 4K!)

Thank you to everyone involved for making this video concept come to life!