Uzair Merchant is one of the first Indians to do production designing at a large scale in Hollywood and he brought glory to his work and the nation as his latest music video STARDUST received global acclaim. Uniquely, it was entirely shot on an iPhone. The video won multiple awards at New York Movie Awards 2021 and Milan Gold Awards 2021, along with receiving an honourable mention at the Los Angeles Film Awards 2021 as well.
Talking about it, Uzair shares that Stardust is a part of the official soundtrack to his TV show, Black Rose, which is currently in pre-production with Hollywood veteran James Bamford of Arrow and Superman and Lois fame. “Stardust is deeply connected to me as it was a visual journey of what I was experiencing during the pandemic. With my father being left completely immobile for over a year and then watching him pass away as we were in production, just made this special in numerous ways. I was trying to explain what it might be like to be trapped between life and death, and through that also bring out the character ‘ROSE’ from my TV show, and connect fact and myth to create fiction,” he confides about the inspiration behind Stardust.
As for the show Black Rose, Uzair is pretty excited to be working on that. “Black Rose is currently in pre-production and we are building its universe from the inside out, with the TV show to soon be an interactive experience allowing users to choose the ending all tied into the NFT space. It’s been an exciting journey over the last year. I began writing during the initial lockdown, while being in hospital by the side of my father in India. 10 weeks through a writing and designing process, Black Rose was born. This is the third show in my Kreativ Universe franchise that I’ve written, and the first that we are taking to production,” he shares.
The effect of Stardust’s success is such that the music video with finhaven technologies is being minted as world’s first security NFT. This feat makes the track and its value extremely unique and Uzair is an excited man, who now wants to explore further in the field and create new benchmarks for him and the field itself.