To appreciate the genius of Slevin of Z3rovisuals, one has to explore the concept of the sleight of hand. It is easy to tell stories based on a convincing plot, but it remains rare to see stories being brought to life with such intricate multi-layered visual perspectives, like the cinematic masterpiece works of Slevin. In such a short time, the young maverick has built a reputation for shaping unique perspectives with his enigmatic camera movements that have contributed to some of Afrobeats biggest moment.

After earning a degree in Business Information Technology in Malaysia, Slevin, born Waheed Olayinka Salau, migrated from his earlier ambitions of becoming a “tech-bro” into the world of cameras and lenses and has never looked back. From hours scouring YouTube tutorial videos, a healthy dose of self belief and his “work smart and not hard mantra”, Slevin grew rapidly in his new career bagging a lead photography role on an IMG led project – 2019 HSBC Women’s Golf Championship; IMG is a leading global talent management business representing talents such as (Bella Hadid, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson). In this period he also worked on interesting projects like the performance videos for several DJ’s from Tomorrowland – a large scale annual EDM festival held in Belgium. Within four years, Slevin has gone on to create videos for local and international platforms such as Jimmy Fallon, The Grammys Recording Academy, Chipper Cash, Oriamo and Instagram, easing him into the top percentile of visual creatives in Nigeria.
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Slevin has equally played a vital role in shaping the history of one of Afrobeats most important moments – CKay’s Love Nwantiti Acoustic performance. This video has gone on to amass nearly 300 million views, becoming one of Afrobeats most relevant pieces of content as well as one of the musician’s most profound and popular videos on the internet.

Slevin wears two hats: he is the founder of Z3roCollective – his own production company, and the Head of Content at Chocolate City. He believes that the visual space is an essential part of the growth and export of Afrobeats and advocates for more people that are creatively inclined to venture into this space. He sits with Guardian Arts, taking us on a tour inside the life of creating visuals for musicians, sharing his come-up, key lessons, and his vision for creating timeless visuals to preserve Afrobeats moments in the sun.

How did you get into the world of cameras?
I had just lost my dad, so my brother sent some emergency funds to me so that I am not stranded while the family sorted out estate administration. At that time, I was still at the University, and doing an internship in Business Information Technology. To ease my commute, I used the funds he sent to buy a car. I had plans to sell the car when I was done with my Internship but as God willed, the car got spoiled. I managed to sell it for scraps and for some strange reason, the first thing that came to my head was to buy a camera. That camera came in handy as you can imagine and it’s been an uphill trajectory from there. I have always just thought all my decisions were destined to be from God.
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How did you navigate training?
It was a lot of YouTube and a dash of trial and error. In my opinion, when an opportunity comes at you, your first answer should be “yes”, Then you go and figure out how to do it. During our final year at University, some of our friends were working on their final year projects and they needed someone to take professional pictures for them; because the other photographers were too busy. I told them I could do it. I ended up spending almost three days on YouTube trying to figure out how to take pictures.

What was the first project you did that made you decide to do this full- time?
It was for IMG. I was the lead Photographer for their project, one of their works. It was the HSBC Women’s Golf Championship in Singapore, in 2019. A good friend, Shandi Strong had asked me to take pictures for the entire event and this experience made me realise I could make this into a viable career.

How was your experience like doing this job in the entertainment scene?
How do I say this? It is intense. It is also very eye-opening; it teaches you a lot of things that you don’t expect. It is unique. It has taught me that you need to be able to sell a solution to people’s problems differently. Each artiste is different and you need to be able to cater to each artiste’s needs. it’s all down to how you can properly portray an artist and his brand identity.

Any memorable or fun set you can never forget?
I don’t know if it was a fun set, but I know that it was a fun experience. It was life-changing. There was a day that Ckay needed to create a video for his ‘Love Nwantiti’ acoustic song, He sent a message to me and my colleagues at Chocolate City. He asked us if we can do an Acoustic video and as always, my response was “yes”. For the record, I really had no idea what an Acoustic video was, so I had to do some research around this to come up with a creative concept that will work for the vibe. At that point in time, It took three people and two cameras to execute the project and we created what has now become one of the most-played Afrobeats videos in YouTube history. All we did was manage the resources we had and focused on delivering quality.

Walk us through your creative process?
Typically we work with briefs to guide creative direction and help understand and manage deliverables and other times, we collaborate with clients to develop briefs. In the latter case, I engage with our team consisting of our creative leads – Sien Essien: Artist Director, Nuella Ugochi: our scriptwriter, Esohe Okpemoya and Rabome speak to support vendor management. Charles Chika (Xlasxic): Art Director, Divine Atuma, Andèm Peters: creative idealists dedicated to behind the scenes and shoot mood and we all just get to work. That is our creative process as far as I can remember.

What’s one unconventional belief in the world of storytelling that you hold?
No matter how bad you think you are, there will always be one person who will like your work and be willing to take a chance on you. That one person is enough motivation for you to start and grow your craft.
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Do you have any role models?
I don’t look up to anyone, respectfully. I like to watch all kinds of “cinematic” and Music videos and I always like to try to figure out how it was shot. It is not from a place of pride too, I just believe looking up to people can bring about “competition”. My role model is my future self.

What’s one hallmark with your work?
My Camera Movement, basically. I have been told by my peers and people who watch the videos that they can tell if a video was made by me just by looking at the camera movement and my color work.

What is your vision as a creative person?
To be honest, I just want to make videos that people can watch and resonate with.

Finally, what are we to expect from you in 2024?
Currently, at z3roCollective, we are handling creative direction for Noon Dave and Tar1q. We would be creating bigger videos for them and generally developing our brand to be more uniquely positioned within the African entertainment industry. We also have some amazing content we will be releasing at Chocolate City this year so it should be a really good year.
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