The directors were captivated by Cassie's story. When she approached the directors to create a music clip for her, they pitched the idea of a narrative that articulates the journey of a girl who purges heavy metals from her skin. They wanted to explore the ways that ailment could become art.

This music video approaches the story of sickness and decay with unexpected vibrance. And the resulting video is inventive and visually complex as it communicates Cassie’s journey and transformation in a dynamic dance-hall style performance piece.

Cuban-American artist Cassie Marin lives with an autoimmune disorder that impairs her body's ability to eliminate toxins, particularly metals like zinc, copper, and iron. This condition presents as a painful skin disease characterised by deep rashes, open pores, and fluid-discharging wounds.

The video is transforming the reality of living with a medical condition into a pop culture moment for the first time on the music video ‘Tanto’.

Cassie teased the video to her social media followers on instagram and tiktok. In the week running up to the release, she unveiled her own personal journey of living with sickness.

The video is a biopunk journey of a girl who purges heavy metals from her skin, inspired by Cassie’s story of living with an autoimmune disorder.

So begins 'the biopunk journey of a girl who purges heavy metals from her skin', as Marin's body becomes the vehicle for stylish VFX augmentation, in a blizzard of ideas and images. Fashion shoot sensibility, high end FX, and lo-fi emoji humour make this one of the visually imaginative and groundbreaking pop videos of the year.

The landscape of visually portraying a girl purging metal out of her skin was a combined effort between in camera effects (thermography, makeup, lensing, set builds) and various post techniques: Point cloud photogrammetry, key frame scaling, multi media compositing, 2D animation, AI generation, and CGI.

All of this was in service of articulating various ways the visuals evoke how ailment could be rendered as art.

During production, the filmmakers embraced any natural skin conditions the artist was experiencing. The only makeup enhancement used for representing a true skin condition was the opening mirror shot rash.

Various cameras were employed to capture the photogrammetry, including an iPhone, iPad, Canon 5D, and pocket Leica. This data was ingested, rendered as a point cloud, tracked, and composited back into the scene with actual depth maps captured on set.

The key FX partner, did stunning CGI work by adding digital mosquitoes in the cupping scene, metal tentacles growing out of Cassie’s back, and a fully rendered liquid metal simulation during the beach scene which complemented the steel bodice the artist wore.

Tanto was received well by audiences and received a high volume of press from industry and music outlets. An internet based release, the film was a Vimeo staff pick, a 1.4 finalist, and just won gold for best music video at Ciclope Latino.

The directors were able to bring a new audience to Cassie Marin, beyond her usual fanbase within the Spanish / Latin speaking communities -- garnering attention from influential instagram pages such as Directors Library and publications like Little Black Book.

It has helped raise awareness of auto-immune disorder and received a large body of engagement across social media, sparking important conversations in the comments section on vimeo and youtube.