SUPER PENG TINGS · MUSIC VIDEO · 2019

SPIDER-MAN
VS. DEADPOOL

Two characters. One rap battle. A comic-book multiverse built from a green screen in a car park, with the entire production taken from an initial idea to the finished music video.

WATCH THE RAP BATTLE ↓

THE CAMERA GUYS × SUPER PENG TINGS

Client: Super Peng Tings
Production: From idea to final film
Shoot: One day
Year: 2019

THE BRIEF

AN IDEA THAT NEEDED A WHOLE PRODUCTION

Startup YouTube channel Super Peng Tings came to us with a premise: Spider-Man and Deadpool facing off in a rap battle. They needed a team to turn that idea into a complete music video.

We developed the vision and handled the lyric writing, audio recording and mastering, costumes, location, lighting, filming and post-production. The shoot itself took one day; the writing, preparation and effects work sat around that filming day.

It is the kind of full music video production where sound, performance and visual design need to be planned together from the beginning.

Spider-Man and Deadpool face each other as the rap battle begins

THE SHOOT

A CAR PARK BECAME OUR GREEN-SCREEN SET

To keep the budget accessible for a new channel, we set up the green screen in a car park instead of hiring a studio. Battery-powered studio lighting gave us a portable setup, and we filmed on Sony A7 III cameras.

The car park supplied the working space; the finished world was created through compositing. Smoke machines and practical effects brought physical texture into a film whose backgrounds could change from dark atmosphere to saturated comic-book colour.

Keeping the location simple gave us room to put the production effort into the characters, their performances and the visual treatment.

Full-length Spider-Man and Deadpool in a purple smoky composite

THE FINISHED MUSIC VIDEO

ENTER THE RAP BATTLE

Watch the complete 2-minute-38-second music video, with performances, original lyric writing, comic-style animation and practical effects brought together in the edit.

Watch Spider-Man vs. Deadpool on Vimeo ↗

THE VISUAL LANGUAGE

COMIC PANELS, COLOUR SPLITS AND A MULTIVERSE FEEL

We wanted the battle to feel as though it existed in the characters’ own multiverse. Halftone dots recall printed comic panels, while red, yellow, blue and purple backgrounds give each exchange a different charge.

RGB displacement separates coloured outlines around the performers. Enlarged doubles and repeated figures make one character appear in several layers of the same frame. Horizontal glitch streaks, radiating lines and animated graphics interrupt the space around them.

Comic-style typography picks out selected lyrics and punchlines. The words appear for emphasis, leaving the performances to carry the rest of the track: this is a music video rather than a continuous lyric video.

Spider-Man with an enlarged RGB-displaced double behind him and Deadpool in the foreground

THE PRACTICAL SHOT

SPIDER-MAN REALLY WAS UPSIDE DOWN

One of the standout setups brought Spider-Man’s familiar upside-down pose into the middle of the exchange. We used a rig, and the performer was physically hanging upside down during filming.

That gave the shot a real inverted performance for Deadpool to react to. The green-screen composite placed both characters into the same graphic world, combining a practical setup with the film’s digital surroundings.

Upside-down Spider-Man facing Deadpool in the finished green-screen composite

THE POST-PRODUCTION CHALLENGE

BUILDING CLEAN EDGES FROM 8-BIT FOOTAGE

The A7 III cameras recorded 8-bit video, which left less colour precision for separating the performers from the green screen than a 10-bit recording would offer. Fast gestures and motion blur made those edges harder to isolate.

We filmed 4K at 25fps. A 1/50-second shutter gave the conventional motion blur for that frame rate; we used faster shutter settings at points, but still had substantial manual masking to do in post-production.

That additional work helped us complete a film we were happy with while working within the equipment and budget available in 2019. Our accompanying article explains the green-screen music video lessons from this shoot, including the balance between shutter speed, keying and post-production time.