Translating Music into Motion
When director Imtiaz Ali and composer A.R. Rahman teamed up for Netflix's Amar Singh Chamkila, the soundtrack was sure to make waves. As the movie was based on a legendary artist, the music was the core of the film's storytelling. As part of the video monetization team at Saregama, my role was to take the raw assets provided by the film's production house and transform them into high-impact digital video products: official lyricals and Behind-the-Scenes (BTS) videos.
I was given the brief, promotion strategy and timelines by the internal content team who was coordinating with the film’s production house. They wanted to release two of the BTS videos for ‘Ishq Mitaye’ and ‘Naram Kaalja’ before the film’s release, Lyrical videos after four days of the official songs release and the rest of the assets after the album launch.
In addition to the assets related to the film, our department head also wanted to promote music of the original ‘Amar Singh Chamkila’ since Saregama was sitting on the entire catalogue of the artist. I was simultaneously briefed to produce dual-language lyrical videos for over 110 of his original legacy tracks.
Visual Storytelling
For song releases, the production houses usually release a short version of the song as video to act as a teaser for the film. My job was to take these assets, extract key frames, and build custom animations and typography layers inside After Effects to deliver unique lyrical videos for each individual song:
Used a gritty, news-story style of grunge animation to mirror a major media announcement. I used a combination of handwritten cursive font and a highly textured, animated grunge font for the lyrics.
Made a whimsical, playful paper-cutout animation style video to match the witty, sarcastic, and lighthearted lyrics of the track.
Focused on creating a dreamy, ethereal style lyrical video which is also the main theme of the music video.
This video uses two animation styles: a soft, nostalgic slideshow of the main character's memories in the beginning, followed by an intense, aggressive slideshow of newspaper clippings that highlight their life. The contrasting animations vividly depict the character's journey.
In this lyrical video, the characters are depicted in darkness while also under a spotlight at the same time. Tried to depict the constant conflict, intense emotions and turbulent dynamics of the story through these animations.
Building upon the theme of the music video that depicts the aftermath of Chamkila's death, tried to show the singer's life and journey with the heavenly clouds and a high contrast colorspace.
Editing & Production
In tandem with the lyric animations, I acted as the lead editor for the official Behind-the-Scenes (BTS) videos of all the songs, going through terabytes of raw studio and on-set footage to piece together entertaining and engaging videos for the viewers.
Initially as part of the music promotion, it was decided that BTS videos for Ishq Mitaye and Naram Kaalja would be released before the film’s release. I made those first and then later completed the entire album.
I wanted to make the Behind-the-Scenes video both informative and deeply engaging. To do this, I selected clips that show the creative process, showcasing raw, on-set footage alongside the real-time directions Imtiaz Ali gave to the crew. I structured the edit using a side-by-side comparison format, showing the raw production footage immediately followed by how the final, polished scene turned out in the film. The pacing and storytelling resonated so perfectly that the video was approved by director Imtiaz Ali himself on the very first version.
My original brief for this video was to make a 90 sec video but the director insisted that the girls had so much fun while shooting this video that we should show that as well. So his ultimate brief was to create the video as long as possible without any time constraints. This itself became a challenge for me to create an interesting and engaging video without letting the momentum dip.
Scale, Speed, and Localization
As part of the video monetization team, it was also decided to push for Amar Singh Chamkila’s original catalog on Saregama’s dedicated punjabi music channel before the movie dropped. As the video producer on the team, I was tasked with creating lyrical videos for 110+ original legacy tracks within an aggressive two-week timeline. The videos required dual-language lyrics with Punjabi on top and English on the bottom.
The Production Bottleneck: A project of this scale and timeline demanded an intense team effort. However, because we were working with classic tracks from the 1980s, many of the lyrics weren't readily available anywhere on the internet, requiring manual transcription. As a native Punjabi speaker, I was completely comfortable writing and syncing Punjabi lyrics, the rest of the team was not. This language barrier proved to be a challenge in ramping up the production speed.
The Solution: To bypass this, I built a master animation template in After Effects. I paired up with a native Punjabi translator to carefully listen to the audio tracks, transcribe the lyrics, and sync the text layers into master composition files. Once the lyric synchronization was locked, the rest of the editing team could seamlessly step in, using my master templates to safely apply the visual assets, background loops, and animations without messing up the lyrical timing.
The Result: By designing this optimized pipeline, we scaled output to 12 polished videos per day, successfully converting a massive historical catalog into modern new age lyrical video assets in under 14 days.
The final lyrical and BTS videos nicely complemented the main music video releases, expanding the album’s overall digital footprint on Saregama’s primary as well as Punjabi YouTube channels.
Official Lyrical Videos (33.3M+ Combined Views):
- Vida Karo: 12.4M views
- Tu Kya Jaane: 11.5M views
- Ishq Mitaye: 8.7M views
- Baaja: 275k views
- Naram Kaalja: 213k views
- Bol Mohabbat: 132k views
Official Behind-The-Scenes (404k+ Combined Views):
- Naram Kaalja BTS: 216k views
- Ishq Mitaye BTS: 153k views
- Tu Kya Jaane BTS: 34k views
Total Campaign Volume: Beyond the primary film releases, the unified production pipeline successfully executed and deployed 122+ highly coordinated video assets across the pre-launch and post-release windows.
Catalog Revitalization: Generated an extrapolated 1M+ cumulative views across the legacy discography, permanently migrating a historic 1980s archive into a modern, monetizable digital asset ecosystem.
