Making AntsLive's viral video Number One Candidate – with vintage Canon optics

The Sound of Music meets the sounds of north London in rapper AntsLive's phenomenally popular music video for his song Number One Candidate. With over 1.3 million TikTok views, the British artist's performance is joyfully set against the Italian Alps by director and manager Tom Emmerson.

The result is both unexpected and entertaining, with the three-minute analogue video comprising a medley of creative shots. They include slingshots, super-zoom reveals and background montages that leave the viewer wondering just how they were created.

"We've all seen hip-hop done in a certain way, at least currently," says Tom, "but there were a million ways to do this video differently: we could have gone to South America or we could have gone into the desert. There were so many ways to take it out of its context."

Aesthetically, Tom wanted the video to feel "different", "like a postcard" and a "real Alpine experience". He also says, "I just knew I wanted it on 16mm film. There's just a magic about it. I wanted it to feel surreal, a feverish dreamy version of The Sound of Music – just because I liked it, and you don't see that in imagery that much these days. Certainly not in hip-hop."

Cinematographer Isaac helped Tom get the specific look he wanted by choosing the right lenses – including the vintage Canon SC15x11 (11-165mm T2.5) Super 16mm zoom lens.

Isaac also brought a taste of a digital workflow to the analogue shoot, using his smartphone to create a feed in order to review footage in the field, rather than having to wait for the film to be processed. The video was shot during the early hours of the day and in the evenings, so this helped save time on the 4.5-day shoot.

1. Opening scene

The opening scene shows Ants riding a horse through the mountainous landscape. For these shots Ants had to learn to ride a horse in just 10 days.

However, it was equally tricky to find the right location which had a view of the mountains behind it, would catch the sun just right, and was flat and straight enough for Tom and Isaac to drive alongside Ants in a pickup truck.

Then they had to choreograph the shot, replicating Tom's vision as closely as possible. Isaac was in the back of the pickup. "The horse was called Lucky – that said everything for how the video went," says Tom. "Isaac was the 'human meat gimbal', as he described himself, and he was pulling focus and stabilising. We still wanted to keep some shake because if you go too smooth you get all sorts of distortion and you lose a lot of the energy."


2. Hyper zoom lens reveal

"I knew I needed a really big zoom lens because I wanted to have these crazy reveals of the landscape," explains Tom. "You think Ants is standing against a green wall then, no, he's next to a fire truck. I want people to feel they've been taken on a journey – and a zoom out is one little journey within a bigger story."

"Any operator will tell you it's challenging to create these shots," says Isaac. "It's tricky, especially if you're panning and operating the camera while zooming, but you're letting the lens do the work, really. It's not super technical."


3. The 'whip-pan' transitions

When the camera 'whips' from Ants singing on one cliff face to another, it's all about timing, says Isaac. "It's purely about being locked into your performer. It helps a little bit if you've got the tripod set up the right way, but you're mainly asking the operator to work in time with the talent.

"My work is to facilitate the director as much as possible and if they're going to be able to nail a beat better than I am, then why would I be operating one second? So Tom was the one who shot that!"


4. Match cut moment

A stand-out moment in the video is the montage of backgrounds, with Ants seemingly static in the scene. This involved a cycle of only two backgrounds at walking distance from each other, and the technique was surprisingly simple. "We had adhesive putty stuck to the screen to mark his position," explains Isaac. "Then we just went to a new spot and put him in the same position.

"I would say that a lot of the work we were doing is far less technically advanced than Charlie Chaplin's work. It's just getting the compositions and the lighting right. It's the real fundamentals of cinematography."

Canon's vintage zooms have a deserved reputation for elevating the quality of filmed pieces. Isaac frequently uses the Canon SC15x11 (11-165mm T2.5) Super 16mm zoom lens in his work.

"I specifically have the second generation of zooms because they still have a lot of the imperfections that really make it, then I'll switch to the later generations if I want pure resolution," he says. But it isn't just the image quality that appeals. "They're also ridiculously lightweight," at just 2.5kg.

"Tom and Isaac have achieved one of the most remarkable, captivating and creative music videos of the year," says Aron. "The combination of their precise framing and powerful optical zooms creates an amazing experience."

Tom says that several factors have contributed to its success. "To say it went viral solely on the basis of the quality of the video would be naive," he says. "It went viral because the video was great, the song was great, but we got lucky as well."

Isaac adds, "We both knew it was going to be a great video, but I think a huge part of the response is the way that image feels when you look at it. It's those intangible things like composition, colour and performance that matter."

The video has opened many doors for the team. "I think it made people trust me a little bit more," says Tom. "Now I'm the guy who made that video, and it's so different from everything else, that I guess they think my ideas probably aren't crazy. That's a really nice place to be in."