Ailments Become Art in Cassie Marin's Dynamic Video 'Tanto'

King She collaborates with Cuban-American singer, songwriter, and fashion model Cassie Marin for the first time on the music video ‘Tanto’.

Cassie lives with an autoimmune disorder that impairs her body's ability to eliminate toxins, particularly metals like zinc, copper, and iron. This condition presents as a painful skin disease characterised by deep rashes, open pores, and fluid-discharging wounds.

Directors King She were captivated by Cassie's story. When she approached the duo to create a music clip for her, they pitched the idea of a narrative that articulates the journey of a girl who purges heavy metals from her skin. They wanted to explore the ways that ailment could become art.

King She approaches the story of sickness and decay with unexpected vibrance. And the resulting video is inventive and visually complex as it communicates Cassie’s journey and transformation in a dynamic dance-hall style performance piece.

The numerous visual explorations of this idea results in the lush new visual feast created for the music video ‘Tanto.'

The landscape of visually portraying a girl purging metal out of her skin was a combined effort between in camera effects (thermography, makeup, lensing, set builds) and various post techniques: Point cloud photogrammetry, key frame scaling, multi media compositing, 2D animation, AI generation, and CGI.

All of this was in service of articulating various ways the visuals evoke how ailment could be rendered as art.     

During production, the filmmakers embraced any natural skin conditions the artist was experiencing. The only makeup enhancement used for representing a true skin condition was the opening mirror shot rash. 

Various cameras were employed to capture the photogrammetry, including an iPhone, iPad, Canon 5D, and pocket Leica. This data was ingested, rendered as a point cloud, tracked, and composited back into the scene with actual depth maps captured on set. 

JAMM, the key FX partner, did stunning CGI work by adding digital mosquitoes in the cupping scene, metal tentacles growing out of Cassie’s back, and a fully rendered liquid metal simulation during the beach scene which complemented the steel bodice the artist wore. The scene with Cassie crying metal was achieved by dripping metal make-up, infused with glycerine, and supplemented in post.

Thermal work in the bodega was enhanced via EB synth, giving it a dreamy, smear like quality that portrays heat and impending sickness. Conceptual artist Sarah Banks provided Z Brush models for the pot smoking scene that were animated and composited into the digitally enhanced bedroom set.

The bespoke attention to lighting and atmosphere was completed through the colour grading wizardry of Daniel DeVue, the award-winning colourist at Trafik and one of the earliest partners in the project. King She chose colour as a key tool to help cohere the emotional contradictions of each scene to allow for a vivid, playful and nightmarish beauty to exist all in the same frame.

All aspects, including simple 2D text animations that are a running theme throughout the video, were in service of communicating the larger thematic idea of Cassie’s skin journey.