The Los Angeles-based, cinematic, hard-rock band Edge of Paradise recently released an ambitious video for their track “Martyr (Monster).” The song is from the band’s 2025 album “Prophecy,” and its accompanying visuals support the immersive world in which Edge of Paradise exists.
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Martyr (Monster) video was directed by Julian Oyanedel Santiesteban and the band’s singer/keyboardist Margarita Monet. In it, the band’s members perform primarily throughout a vast, rocky desert. The sun-baked imagery is occasionally intercut with cooler footage of individual members playing within a geometric, mirrored space, creating a strong visual contrast. At one point, a female figure, who’s been tracking the band through the wasteland, catches up with Monet and engages her in a martial-arts form of combat.
Two days were spent shooting outdoor footage at the Trona Pinnacles in the California Desert National Conservation Area. Viewers might recognize the natural spire-filled landscape from episodes of Star Trek and
The Mandalorian. A third day was spent shooting at the indoor location filled with mirrors.
According to Monet, roughly a month went into planning for the shoot, getting necessary props in-hand, putting outfits together and storyboarding what shots would be needed. The track for the video is a long edit – more than eight minutes - with an instrumental section added around the four-minute mark. This portion serves as an opportunity to introduce fans to Edge of Paradise’s new keyboardist, Alex Nasla, first as a shadowy figure who is further revealed as the song progresses.
In addition to directing, Santiesteban also served as DP, shooting with a Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera 6K and Sigma lenses. Edge of Paradise had purchased a DJI Air drone for a prior music-video shoot in Iceland, and once again put it to use on Martyr (Monster) to capture dramatic aerial shots throughout the desert landscape. The team scheduled the shoot to best take advantage of the rising and setting sun, with setup beginning as early as 6am.
Santiesteban says the goal was to create an epic music video, much like those that played on MTV during its heyday.
“Everything had a real production value,” he says of the classics. “Margarita said it best: pre-production, for us, is essential. We would be talking and planning, and she would be doing all these storyboards. I would check references and see which lenses are going to work well and what filters I'm going use, because I'm a big practical guy.”
He points to the mirrored room as an example of how he chooses to capture visuals in-camera, rather than altering them during the post process.
“All that tilt up and down, where you can see the reflection, is the actual reflection,” he reveals. “It's not made in post.”
After the shoot wrapped in late 2025, Monet spent two weeks assembling the video in Adobe Premiere Pro, a software she’s become quite familiar with thanks to her DIY attitude.
“I use Premiere for most of the videos now,” she shares. “I've used DaVinci before, but I really prefer Premiere, especially with each version. You can do so much in it, so I just got really comfortable with that program.”
In the edit, she tried not to go overboard with effects, instead adding slight blurs and distortion. She finds that working with proxy files helps get the best performance from her editing system.
“They're huge files, so the proxies are essential to make, otherwise my system would not even go,” she relates. “Plus, I have like 30 layers stacked on top of each other.”
For the color grade, she continued her work in Premiere.
“I really research a lot of different color correction techniques,” she shares. “And also, I've downloaded a lot of LUTs and plug-ins.”
While the outdoor lighting during the shoot for Martyr (Monster) changed throughout the day, Monet embraced the variations as creative opportunities instead of trying to maintain uniformity from shot to shot.
“The light was always changing with the sun and the clouds and the shadows,” she recalls. “Sometimes people prefer color correction that is very consistent, so I tried to get a little bit of that, but also go with how the light was changing and maybe play into that for each different scene. I started worrying less about being consistent and by-the-book, and kind of played into what was on the screen and enhance what I was seeing.”
The final render took eight hours. For Monet, being involved in so many aspects of the production, and having collaborated with Santiesteban on prior projects, helped in achieving the video’s high-end look, despite a limited budget.
“That’s why I started doing (this) - being more involved in making these videos - is because of budget,” she explains. “We worked with people that bring their entire crew, and the budgets were $10- to $15- to $20,000. You do one music video and then you're done! You have barely enough budget for promoting it or anything else. So, to me, it's important to have that visual aspect. And I also love being involved. At the end of the day, when it's your project, you really put (in the) blood, sweat and tears.”
Looking back, both Monet and Santiesteban agree that scouting a location in advance offers numerous benefits. In the case of the shoot at the Trona Pinnacles, simply bringing in the band’s gear was tough due to the rocky terrain. Uneven footing also affected Santiesteban’s camera movement, and even put him dangerously close to the edge of a cliff at one point.
“There's always something,” Santiesteban laughs, while recalling the shoot. “I would say just try to go over the scouting process for a little longer. I know we had two days, but sometimes it was really, really hard to work on. I had to jump (over) rocks and do all this crazy stuff.”
“We learned that, for the next day, have all the batteries prepared,” Monet adds. “Unless you have an RV, and you have the bathroom, because we had to go there and then come back to kind of recoup a little bit.”
In addition to Monet and Nasla, Edge of Paradise is made up of guitarists Dave Bates and Doug Weiand, bassist Kenny Lockwood and drummer Jamie Moreno. The band will soon embark on a European tour. Additionally, Monet and Santiesteban continue to collaborate beyond their work for Edge of Paradise, with Monet providing art direction for other bands Santiesteban is working with.