Reimagining Classics for a Crime Thriller
Hunter is a gritty Mumbai crime-thriller series on Amazon miniTV starring Suniel Shetty. The soundtrack for the show took a unique approach: it didn't use newly written tracks, but instead pulled nine iconic old songs from Saregama's legacy catalog and completely remade them into heavy, aggressive rock tracks sung by Suraj Jagan to match the violent tone of the series.
My task was to deliver custom lyric videos for all nine tracks. The operational objective was a balancing act: I needed to use footage and imagery from the series to get viewers excited about the show, but since these tracks functioned as background scores for intense action scenes or major plot points rather than lip-synced music videos, I had to be incredibly careful not to give away massive story spoilers or use clips that contained random dialogue blocks.
Shifting the Footage Pipeline
- The Workflow Problem: Initially, the production house sent over raw Behind-the-Scenes (BTS) footage to build the lyricals. However, after trying to piece a few shots together, it became obvious that the loose, handheld quality of the BTS tapes completely clashed with the highly polished, cinematic look of the actual show.
- The Practical Solution: I requested access to the final master footage from the series instead. Because these files were crisp and high-resolution, they gave me the perfect raw material to freeze, isolate, and heavily manipulate images without worrying about pixelation when zooming or scaling. I developed a workflow that blended high-end animated stills with short, select video loops, allowing me to build premium visuals that protected the show's secrets.
Nine Songs, Nine Distinct Styles
The biggest creative hurdle was avoiding repetition. Delivering nine videos for a single album meant I couldn't just reuse the same grunge overlay over and over. I researched and built a totally unique visual framework for each track, using the specific scene's context as my guide:
Tied to an on-screen shootout, this video uses ultra-fast transitions, motion graphics overlays, and freeze-frame animations. The lyrics use bold, grungy white text styled with a chaotic RGB color-splitting glitch effect to match the heavy rock beats.
This was the most complex and rewarding video to build. I took a high-res pin-board texture from the show's investigation files and brought it into a 3D After Effects workspace with a handheld camera wiggle. I used Element 3D to create depth, stylized the entire sequence into a high-contrast film-noir aesthetic, added dripping blood text effects, and closed out the track with a realistic fire overlay showing the board burning down.
A deeply story-driven track where I extracted key character frames and animated them step-by-step to reflect the narrative arc, pairing the images with a loose, handwritten grunge font.
To respect the track's theme, the animated graphic layouts are completely filled with shifting smoke overlays that interact with the background text layers.
I created a 3D depth effect by sandwiching the actors between layers of exploding color bursts. The lyrics feature a glowing yellow style masked with internal liquid explosions.
Built entirely around a brutal fight scene, I loaded this edit with raw paper textures, ink splashes, and aggressive grunge layers, locking bold "Yahoo" text blocks directly behind the actor.
This video leans heavily into native After Effects 3D camera sweeps. I mapped the characters across spatial coordinates and layered them with a striking three-color night heat-vision overlay.
For Mere Sapno Ki Rani, I animated the stills inside a sleek 3D environment backed by glowing neon outlines.
For Rafta Rafta, I shifted gears entirely into fast-moving anime-style motion backgrounds paired with high-speed digital glitch overlays.
The nine distinct lyrical videos successfully drove traffic to Saregama's main channel, giving the soundtrack release a unique visual identity that scaled catalog streams while supporting the Amazon miniTV show launch.
Asset Performance Breakdown
The custom action-thriller lyrical package generated over 1.3 Million cumulative views on YouTube.
- Awara Hoon: 311k views
- Mere Sapno Ki Rani: 199k views
- Jeena Yahan Marna Yahan: 188k views
- Dum Maro Dum: 178k views
- Yahoo: 132k views
- Rafta Rafta: 98k views
- Rang Barse: 75k views
- Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaaye: 61k views
- Dekha Na Haye Re: 57k views
