Vatani: Hybrid Music Video Case Study

Music video for "Vatani" (وطنی) by Mina Deris. Directed, edited and VFX by Heydoo Hedayati.

Vatani means "my homeland". The song needed a world that no longer exists: a 1950s Persian Gulf railway journey through Abadan, palm groves, wetlands and crowded stations. Building that for real would have required period locations, a vintage train, costumes and dozens of extras.

No budget for locations or crew, and the artist in Vancouver, thousands of kilometres away from the places in the story. At the same time, the performance had to stay 100% real: Mina's face, voice and emotion could not be replaced by an AI avatar.

Concept and a 12-shot storyboard to lock the visual story before shooting

Performance shot on iPhone in an empty white room in Vancouver, framed and lit to match each storyboard panel

Every shot rebuilt with AI video tools (Higgsfield) around the real performance, keeping the original plate as the anchor for movement and lip-sync

Edit, sound design and a film-like color grade in Premiere Pro, then 4K upscaling with Topaz

A cinematic, period-accurate music video with a real human performance at its heart, produced by a one-person team at a fraction of the cost of a traditional shoot. The same hybrid workflow can be used for any artist, anywhere: film yourself against a plain wall, and I build the world around you.