Rammstein „Adieu“ Music Video Lighting Design

Rammstein „Adieu“ Music Video Lighting Design

The French design studio "Alien le studio" are responsible for the lighting design in the video for the recently released Rammstein single “Adieu” from 2022 and have once again relied on the Depence Software System to realize their vision.

Alien were contacted to work on the latest video clip of the world famous group Rammstein, which was shot in Paris last year. The first part of the music video was shot at the Garnier Opera House and the other parts were filmed in a studio. The story told in the clip, is about the band organizing a heist in a secret laboratory where clones of the band members are stored in order to replace Rammstein should they ever be no more. Contrasting this idea, the band decides to burn that place, as the would want to leave in peace without ever being replaced.

The video itself is thereby more than just a plain music video. It is more like a short film, which was produced by Dissidence Production under the direction of Specter Berlin. The image was made by DOP Khaled Motased and gaffer Vincent Leborgne. Alien were contacted to contribute the light design of the video as well as to take care of the 3D images for the “laboratory” scenes of the video. For that particular scene, they used the Depence multimedia show design and visualization software system in order to realize their ideas, after importing the 3D made by the set designer. The software allowed the creative team to emerge themselves into the atmosphere of the key scenes as they were able to visualize all kinds of lighting sources. In this way, they were able to incorporate not online lighting effects but also lasers, smoke as well as flames into the scene.

The design of the laboratory as set piece resembles a neo futuristic décor made of 6 cryogenic pods. The neon atmosphere, the cold light, steel and grime elements accentuate the more secret and kind of diabolical side of the set. Red laser sources, which were also present as lead motive in the Rammstein video clip for “Deutschland”, were additionally added graphical wise. The challenge was to find balance between the ambient lighting, the front lighting and these laser sources. The Depence software was a great help here.

“We are using Depence more and more in the shooting community to preview scenes and sets beforehand and then determine the choice and number of sources needed for the shoot. We like to use Depence for several reasons, but it's the balance between photorealistic rendering and speed of work that we like most. Every tool has its place and can be used in an optimal way.” – Julien (Alien le studio, 2023)

For Alien, Depence comes with many advantages in comparison to other visualizers. As texture rendering is something which is very important to them for adding extra touch to the shoot, Alien were more than thrilled about the latest major release which is Depence R3. Now it was possible to properly model the textures of the set by using various transparency effects. The ease of use of the cameras and the rendering quality of these were also a big plus for them. With Depence R3, Alien made use of the new camera settings, e.g., the newly implemented focal length settings, new lens effects, image settings as well as glow and glare.

“For us Depence is a tool that allows us to centralize ideas on the same support for a simpler reading of the image. We are currently working on a much bigger project where we use Depence to the maximum and we have no problem. We have been using Depence for 2 years now and we have adopted it 100%. It would be difficult for us to do without it today!”