On the One with Chadwick “Niles” Phillips
Some projects are bigger than the look from the outside.
Our work with Chadwick “Niles” Phillips to produce 5 Instagram Reels to promote this year’s On The One Music Festival was one such project.
With just one small room, a single subject and only 5 Reels in just a few hours of filming, this project seemed “small,” but for Skull Dogs Media, this was a major step forward.
This project started because of last year’s On The One Music Festival. In 2025, I went to the festival because I wanted to see Nur-D perform live for the first time. I had filmed concerts before, including helping my sister with footage for Always Uttori and capturing parts of events like Dua Lipa circa 2018, and the Sonic Symphony, but On The One was different.
It was my first time filming a concert for Skull Dogs Media, even unofficially.
Sadly, Jose couldn’t make it that day, and they had the Lumix, our main camera with them. So I had to make do with what I had: my phone, our DJI Action Camera and the Insta360. The footage wasn’t at our usual standard, but I was still able to shape it into something fun. I even made a vlog, and tried to honor the feeling of the festival through the branding and presentation.
Months later, that work came back around.
After Skull Dogs Media finally made an Instagram account and followed Chadwick “Niles” Phillips, founder of The Avant Garde and the On The One Music Festival, he reached out to us about working together. He had seen the my On The One vlog and had been surprised by how much care had gone into it. He noticed the branding, the aesthetic, and the way the festival had been represented.
That meant a lot.
I had already been hoping to get his attention, because I knew he was someone Skull Dogs Media would want to work with. A friend of mine, Wisdom Young, of Black, Bold and Brilliant, had even tagged me in one of Niles’ posts earlier when he was looking for a videographer for a secret project.
So when Niles finally reached out through Instagram, Skull Dogs Media was already ready to go!
Niles was looking to produce 5 Promotional Reels for the 5th Annual On The One Music Festival, centered around this year’s headliner, Carl Thomas and his album “Emotional”.
Ahead of the shoot, Jose and I got prepared at Dreamers Vault in South St. Paul to test our equipment and make sure everything was properly calibrated. We checked the cameras, tested audio options, and worked through the setup as much as we could ahead of time. We had a few microphones we wanted to try, including a clip-on DJI mic, Jose’s Shure mic, and our Rode shotgun mic. In the end, the cleanest practical setup came from relying on the camera audio.
The Record Room space Niles chose for the shoot was beautiful. He’d had some other options lined up, but we knew immediately that this was the spot. The only drawback was that it was naturally dim. Fortunately, I’d brought one of our studio lights and one of my tube lights. We ended just up using the studio light, the tube light couldn’t add enough meaningful light without blocking Jose’s camera angle.
For this shoot, we filmed Niles using a two-camera set up. I filmed the front angle on the Lumix and Jose had the side angle on the Sony.
As we set up our cameras, Niles positioned himself on the couch in front of the wall of record displays. As we talked and go to know each other better and Niles explained his vision, I noticed a set of boxes tucked away under a counter with even more records inside. That changed everything.
Seeing an opportunity, Jose and I dug through the boxes, finding as many records by Black artists as we could to better curate the backdrop for Niles’ project. That got him excited. Niles has a sharp eye for detail, so the moment he saw us paying attention to the same things, it really started to click, just like the Whitney Houston and Boyz II Men records we placed beside him.
Working with Niles was a great experience. He was charismatic, energetic, and naturally cool on camera.
He came in with a strong concept. Each Reel would focus on a song from Carl Thomas’ album Emotional, helping build excitement for Carl Thomas as the headliner for On The One. What impressed me was that even though he had notes and a clear direction, most of what he said on camera was unscripted. He spoke from knowledge and genuine appreciation.
As part of his album review, Niles honored Carl Thomas by singing covers of the songs he reviewed for the Reels, and honestly, the man can sing. It shouldn’t have surprised me, since he is a rapper and performer himself, but still. He has a great voice.
Niles and Jose got along really well. They connected over music, culture, and shared Afro-Caribbean threads, and Niles seemed to appreciate Jose’s directness.
We were only supposed to make 5 Reels, but by the end of the shoot, we had enough material that I decided to split the 1st Reel in half to make 6 in total.
Having the two camera angles helped a lot, as well, especially when cutting around pauses or tightening the pacing to hit that 1-1:30 Minute mark. But some Reels were harder to shape than others. The final one in particular ran longer than the rest, which made trimming it down while keeping the flow intact more challenging.
This shoot was one of our first major steps into music-centered promotional work with a professional festival organizer. It was also a strange and exciting full-circle moment: we had unofficially filmed On The One the year before because we cared about being there, and now Niles had brought us in to help promote the next one officially.
That felt huge.
Even if the shoot itself was a bit smaller in scope.
The 5th Annual On The One Music Festival takes place on Saturday, August 8, from 3 PM to 9 PM. It’s free to attend, so...
We’ll see you On The One.
