How Lil Nas X's 'Panini' Director Took A Video Treatment From The Notes App To Virtual Reality

several weeks prior, Mike Diva, the director of Lil Nas X's new Orwellian fantasy video "Panini," slept no more than 10 hours total. On Thursday (September 5), it was easy to be able to see why — months of Diva's hard was on full display when the effects- and choreo-heavy visual finally came out. "I slept in my office for about two weeks," he told MTV News over the phone, laughing victoriously. "It certainly shaved a number of years off of my life." The directing, dancing, and conceptualizing point man can right now relax and watch Cartoon Network's Chowder because he admittedly doesn't know much about the origins of the character Panini (who Lil Nas X refers to in the song).


Diva's viral videos like 2011's "Dubstep Guns" and 2016's "Japanese Donald Trump Commercial" showcased his unique, vibrant, and goofy approach to self-aware comedy. This year, he was approached by the music commissioner at Sony with the possibility to direct Lil Nas X's latest. "He figured I could be brilliant for it because it had the surrealist slapstick humor I strive for, and that it needed some visual flare," Diva mentioned. From there on, he regarding Lil Nas X and his team and started working on concepts.


At first, Lil Nas X sought something mixing live action and animation in line with and inspired by Chowder. However soon after that concept was scrapped, the rapper's team came back with a treatment glowing with cyberpunk and futuristic inspirations. "The Sony commissioner sent me the concept that Lil Nas X actually wrote on his Notes app also it was insane," Diva mentioned. Lil Nas X shared it on social media over the weekend and previewed it at his 2019 VMAs performance. Soon after reading it, I was like, we have to do this," Diva mentioned, yet how in the hell are we going to do it without a million dollars?"


"Panini" takes place in a fancy, glowing metropolis in the future, where holographic ads featuring Lil Nas X stretch up the sides of buildings and pop up via streets. The design rings familiar and uniquely stylish; Diva mood-boarded "every single scene," taking inspiration from seminal futuristic visions like Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner. "Nas was very receptive to all of my ideas: concepts for robots, cars, and other things like that," Diva mentioned. The shooting process moved rapidly. "We pretty much got the treatments to the video a week before we shot it. So we roughly had a number of days to rewrite the treatment and make it into an actual shootable video, and then a couple days of pre-production, and then we were just thrown right into it."


Since shooting was so swift, Diva, who felt insecure about the excellent class of some of the effects, determined to add holograms to "pick up the slack." He also worked on the silly quantity of advertisements that help fill the world, from the real brands — Uber, Fiat, Beats By Dre — to the fake ones. The complete creation was a huge, taxing, and exciting experience — one much grander than Diva's generally intimate method of making YouTube videos.


"To pull something off like this is actually pretty insane in the music-video world," he mentioned. "In post-production, it took almost a month because each and every shot was a multi-layered digital effects shot." Yet arduous, Diva loved the process because it reminded him of the "golden age" of expensive, high-concept music videos in the 1990s that felt undeniably cinematic. (Indeed, some of the era's biggest visionaries — Hype Williams, David Fincher, Spike Jonze, and more — graduated to feature films.) "I feel like you don't visualize as several of those anymore, so I was stoked have the ability to do that because those kinds of videos are what inspired me to direct in the initial place."


Actress Skai Jackson plays the video's title character who just can't stand seeing Lil Nas X everywhere. She flees nevertheless yet still ends up coming face-to-face with him dancing in an alley and surrounded by robots. They filmed the scene filmed 5 a.M. As soon as the complete crew was prepared to go to sleep — apart from Lil Nas X. Each person was exhausted, and Nas had just been napping, so we woke him up and had him dance in an alley for a hour and he killed it," Diva said.


Lil Nas X's electric routine was in part choreographed by Diva. "I worked with the dancer, Phil, to choreograph the movement for the robots using motion capture," Diva mentioned. "I basically wanted him to come up with the movements that, if Nas did not have the time to learn, or if he wasn't necessarily a good dancer, that he might just perform in front of those robots and look cool." Once brought a simplified version of the routine, Nas didn't aspire to settle. "He was adamant about learning the dance in the day that we had to learn it, and he really wanted to just do the complete thing." At that moment, Diva knew that the video could be something special.


The video wraps up soon after Jackson lands back in the city to find the rapper turning off his presence so that, as Diva mentioned, "he can kill the saturation of his brand, just for a moment" and show Panini that he does care for her. This happy finale could have potentially been a little bit darker, if Diva's original treatment had been used. "It would have had this ending, however then, right after a little bit of blank screen and you also think it's over, there's a rebooting sequence and you also visualize Nas floating in front of the TV with a bunch ferns, and all of the Nas holograms come back more obnoxious than ever," he laughed. Diva also noticed inspiration in director Jordan Peele's frightening visions to give "Panini" a haunting closing memory. "There could be a horror version of 'Panini,' almost like the remix of 'I Got 5 On It' used in Us. Subsequently, he'd do a classic 'Thriller' turn to the camera, and you also would visualize that his eyes are glowing red."


It took a city of people to bring the metropolis of "Panini" to life, and despite a lack of sleep, Diva is aware it was worth it to help amplify and execute the special vision of Lil Nas X. "I'm happy to mention that I was able to take 80 percent of his ideas and make them happen," he mentioned. "We work really well with each other, and he's really fun to collaborate with."