Kendrick Lamar

Blood

I started this project to pay homage to the opening track "Blood" from Kendrick Lamar's "Damn" album. Since the first listening of the song, back in 2017, I was obsessed by the mood, the meaning of the lyrics and the different interpretations I could find on internet (Genius, Reddit, ...etc.). So I wanted to create this unofficial music video to decode the mysterious meaning of the song and share my personal vision of it.

I'd really love to see an official music video for this song, but I think it will never happen. In the Beats 1 interview with Zane Lowe, Kendrick didn't want to speak on the deeper meaning of this skit, opting instead to let the art speak for itself. When Zane asked whether it represented 'the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning,' he refused to answer, but confirmed it is the right question to ask. 'Damn' album can be played back and forth depending on whether you start from the beginning ('Blood') or from the end ('Duckworth')and the storytelling is radically different, which let the listener decide whether he wants a happy or tragic ending.

Since the first listening of the song, I felt red images and tried to reach this monochromatic blood-ish red and foggy mood. Red is associated with strong emotional feeling like power, violence or danger, which fits perfectly the storytelling of the song.

From my point of view, the blind lady is clearly referring to Lady Justice who give justice without a sense of partiality, but it can also refer to America or the Police that is an extension of the Law which can sometimes tragically pull a trigger without looking.

I created the Kendrick outfit and did the fabric animation directly with Marvelous Designer. It was a bit time-consuming, but it allows me to have some realistic fabric wrinkles.

I unwarped the UVs on Rizom Lab and made the texture using Substance Painter. It was so easy to create realistic fabric textures in this two software.

I created a series of three original posters for the film. I also make an alternate lyrics version for each poster. I really enjoyed doing those posters !

I wanted to bring a reference to the law. So I've created this law table and felt that it would be interesting that it was broken. It could be interpreted as that sometimes the police can forget some part of the law.

Behind the lyrics of the songs, it seems to be a hidden message about police brutality. Even if this only concerns a minority of police officers, unfortunately it seems that some are abusing their power, often over minorities...

I modeled this pair of shoes for the occasion of the film, based on the Reebok Club C Acid Wash model designed by Kendrick himself. When I realized that Kendrick was no longer collaborated with Reebok but with Nike, I decided to transform my 3D model on a generic no branded sneaker.

Here is some shatter test I did for the fracture sequence. I realized after doing this that it was paying homage to one of my favorite movie shot of all time : the Terminator 2's T-1000 freezing sequence (Hasta La Vista Baby).

The song seems to be a reflection on the choices that life offers us in the world we're living in, and the different paths our life is taking through them. From our social background, skin color, or beliefs, we can be trapped in this world, like in Hell. Even if you have justice by your side and escape from police brutality, you can still die in a gunfight from gang warfare (as mentioned in the "Duckworth" song).

This is probably my favorite shot from the movie. I called him the "shooter". His role is tragic because it takes away all hope and ends the storytelling. I wasn't sure how to end the movie and which character would pull the trigger. But I found it interesting to introduce someone who can represent the gang environment, which would made the film more meaningful than just a review of police brutality. At the end of the day, we all be part of a complex system that can be very dangerous in both ways.

For this film I’ve developed a custom camera rig with special focal length control (Vertigo shot effect). This was pretty handy to quickly frame the shots. You can see some example above. I always wanted to do this kind of rig to save time in the animation process, and the good news is that the setup can be reused for other future projects.