How 3Stacks Is Building the Visual Legacy of the UK Underground
From low-budget cameras to sold-out premieres, her raw, intimate films capture the unseen moments of a rising scene.
3Stacks is one of the most prolific headline acts in the world right now. Just this year alone, she’s lit up stages at Village Underground, Wireless Festival, AntagFest, and countless others. She’s not a performer in the usual sense though. Behind the scenes, she’s the creative force behind the visuals for some of your favourite artists - Lexa Gates, Len, Finessekid, and so many more.
But on a mild Friday in June, the spotlight was all hers. A sold-out crowd packed into PeckhamPlex, a South London institution, for the public premiere of ‘Kino DVD Vol. 2,’ a “visual mixtape” documenting the UK underground in its rawest, most unfiltered form. Kino DVD is 3Stacks’ most personal project, and the one she’s poured the most into.
“I feel like I’m graduating,” she told me a few nights before. “I feel like I’m in exam season right now.”
Her journey into filmmaking was anything but conventional. Born in Wiesbaden, Germany, and raised in London from age seven, she didn’t grow up surrounded by the kind of media that now defines her work. “My only source of entertainment was reading.” Writing seemed like the natural path, until she “clocked [that] I wasn't really good at English. I just really, really liked stories.”
That love of how things worked, both on the page and in the real world, led her to study engineering. First a BTEC, then a degree in mechanical engineering - though she didn’t finish it. “The reason why I really, really like engineering is because it allows me to figure out how everything around me works,” she said. “And that’s kind of how I am.”
Ironically, it wasn’t school or cinema that sparked her obsession with visuals, it was watching Doctor Strange during lockdown. From then, she fell in love with editing. Next came the camera. Inspired by gritty Dipset and 50 Cent videos, she started wondering “what would those archive videos look like for artists today,” and who would document them?
With that in mind, she went to her local CEX in Brixton, bought the cheapest camera she could find, and DMed anyone she could think of. At first, she was just “that one girl in the party going around with a camera.” As time went on, her edits got sharper, and her vision clearer. Eventually, she developed an almost forensic love for footage: “I can watch a 24 frame per second music video and see every single frame.” Purposefully though, her videos aren’t smooth and polished - they’re textured and intimate, even a little rough around the edges. “My videos are supposed to feel like you're not meant to be seeing them,” she explained. “Like a fly on the wall.”
The ‘Kino DVD’ series takes that concept even further. They aren’t documentaries in the traditional sense. She compares it more to making an album - built from candid footage, unreleased music, and real emotion.
The contrast between ‘Volume 1’ and ‘Volume 2’ is striking, almost jarring. Many of the artists from the first film have blown up since then, and achieved things that “the versions of themselves in Volume one probably couldn’t fathom.” That being said, Stacks’ focus isn’t on the performances or the hype. She’s interested in the quiet, transitional moments before and after the lights.
“I try to capture a lot of the before and after because I feel like those are the emotions that artists forget… You don’t see people nervous before the show, even though there’s a full crowd waiting to see them.”
Part of what makes 3Stacks’ visuals feel so different is that she’s truly an insider, and she’s been in the room long before the camera ever comes out. “This isn’t an introduction. It’s my perspective. I believe my friends deserve to be documented.” Everyone she films knows her. They’ve shared meals, stories, time... That trust demands authenticity.
“It feels [super] raw and emotional because there’s so much work that’s gone into it… It makes them grateful for their own journey and it puts things into perspective.”
That perspective didn’t come easily. Throughout school and early adulthood, she faced constant barriers - financial, educational... “My mum couldn’t afford tuition, so I just had to teach myself.” She didn’t even care about money at first: “All I cared about was getting good enough that I’m undeniable.”
Still, her first cheque came from Mercedes and Heron Preston. She spent it on a holiday (“I went to Italy. And I probably spent the rest on swag”).
Her biggest creative influence? Outkast’s André 3000. “His stubbornness in his creative ideas made me kind of see that I didn’t have to become a product of my environment.” It’s where the name 3 Stacks comes from. “He’s the definition of doing what you want, not caring what anyone else thinks,” she said.
That spirit now drives her beyond film. She’s thinking in new formats - books, galleries, archives. She wants to release a physical book filled with visuals from Kino DVD Vol. 1 and 2, plus the moments that didn’t make the cut. The ones only she caught.
For young filmmakers coming up now, her advice is simple but earned: be patient. “Patience with the stuff you’re documenting, with the people, with yourself,” she said. “There’s never a right time to release anything. You just have to feel it.”
As for the big screen, “really and truly the only reason I’m doing the premiere is so I can see my work on a big screen, and all my friends can see themselves up there too.”
From Brixton to Japan. From £20 cameras to cinema premieres. From engineering lectures to editing timelines. 3Stacks is building her own archive of the underground and creating a visual legacy for a scene that rarely gets documented right.
And this? This is just the beginning.
“Shout out Moi Digi. Shout out Bami - my cover boy. Shout out BXKS. Shout out everyone in Volume 1 and Volume 2.”