Almost a week after announcing its “dream collab” with one of the country’s biggest love teams turned real life couple, Kathryn Bernardo and Daniel Padilla, award-winning Filipino band Ben&Ben on Monday evening released the music video “Sa Susunod na Habang Buhay.”
The new music video uploaded on the band’s official YouTube channel, is helmed by the band’s resident director Jorel Lising and written by Filipino web series “Gaya sa Pelikula” creator Juan Miguel Severo.
In the music video, KathNiel, stars as a romantic couple stuck in a time loop.
“Sa Susunod na Habang Buhay’s visual narrative explores the complicated relationship dynamics of two lovers who have lost and found each other in a fated cycle of events.
Severo shared that the song deals with the “possibility of another life to succeed in love,” and KathNiel complements the video he has in mind.
“Then it hit me, what about a couple stuck in a time loop?” the writer said.
“What if every time one dies, they go back to their first date with one of them carrying memories from their previous run? It took the band, Direk, and I a couple of zoom calls, brainstorming ideas to compound on that concept and get everything laid out before I presented it to KathNiel,” he added.
In the video, Lising made use of non-liner and fragmented storytelling to capture the couple’s memories in its “undiluted form.”
“It all comes from the content of the song – it’s a strong piece that speaks about love lost and an intense sense of longing, so the process of developing the treatment and Severo’s script came from that. The challenge for us was to maximize the emotion based on that kind of narrative,” the director said.
Meanwhile, the band’s co-vocalist and acoustic guitarist Miguel Benjamin, described the collaboration as both a “dream and serendipitous sequence of events.”
He shared that the idea for the music video came around two months ago when the band’s keyboardist Patricia Lasaten worked on the music of Severo’s
The vocalist shared that since the band offered “Ride Home” to the series for free, Severo inr return graciously offered to write a script for the music video of “Sa Susunod Na Habang Buhay” and also pitch his idea to his good friends Bernardo and Padilla.
“We pushed through, and to our surprise, they loved both the idea of working with all of us and the script,” Benjamin said.
“This was a big thing for us because we never expected that these great artists would be open to doing a music video with us, given their stature and busy schedules,” he added.
During the shoot for the MV, Lising said that he didn’t experience difficulty in working with KathNiel despite the time constraints.
. “We didn’t have a whole lot of time with them, but they definitely possess star power quality on camera. Every frame we took of them has a strong presence that comes with lots of experience, especially since they’ve been acting for so long now,” the director concluded.
“Sa Susunod na Habang Buhay” has gained over 178,700 views in just half an hour since it was released via Sony Music Philippines. —Rosette Adel
