Video
Name: BOY (I NEED YOU)
Artist: Mariah Carey
Director: Joseph Kahn
Producer: Greg Tharp
Cinematographer: Brad Rushing
Brad Rushing's recent credits include X's GONNA GET YA for DMX, WORK
IT by Nelly featuring Justin Timberlake and 2nd Unit on the feature
film TORQUE. Brad won the 2002 VMA for Best Cinematography for Moby's
WE ARE ALL MADE OF STARS.
(The following article was written by Brad
Rushing)
Mariah Carey's music video BOY (I NEED YOU) filmed in both Japan and
Los Angeles took a long, circuitous path to realization. The original
concept was for an entirely different track, THE ONE. In fact, when
we began the shoot that is the tune we were working with.
I arrived in Tokyo along with director Joseph Kahn in late November
for only a couple days of prep. Of the crew we were working with, only
our AD, line producer and gaffer spoke English fluently. Our 1st AC
spoke passable English and the Key Grip did not speak English at all.
I tried my few Japanese phrases on him, succeeding in eliciting a puzzled
look and then an accommodating chuckle with my salutation "I am
Godzilla."
Once, while on a movie for three months in Brazil I learned workable
Portuguese, becoming proficient enough to interact with the crew without
a translator. It was a wonderful experience and I would have loved getting
to know and speak with the folks in Japan, but we were only there four
days.
As we began working in Shinjuku we were observed by what was at first
a well-behaved and moderate-sized crowd of onlookers. However within
the space of about 30 minutes that crowd began to swell rapidly to the
point where we quickly found ourselves immersed in a sea of people.
It was amazing! Unless you were standing shoulder to shoulder with someone
you had to shout across the three or four people's worth of human traffic
that would be moving or milling about between you and it continued to
get worse!
Apparently the local television and radio outlets had broadcast news
of our supposedly "secret" shoot. Out came masses of kids
with the ubiquitous camera-equipped, internet-ready Japanese cell phones
who, unknown to us, were frantically snapping and transmitting photos
of our preparations to multitudes of fellow Tokyo Mariah Carey fans.
Before we had even rolled a frame of film, the Tokyo police shut us
down.
It was a startling experience finding ourselves 5478 miles from home,
with crew, equipment, Mariah Carey in wait ... and nowhere to shoot!
Joseph and the production team quickly regrouped. We sent away much
of our large crew and equipment trucks and orchestrated a clandestine
move to Shibuya, a much larger square, where we set up a few long lens
cameras and a Steadicam to follow Mariah and actor Will Yun Lee from
their Limousine across a street through the local populace.
At Shibuya we told anyone who asked that we were filming a mayonnaise
(mariahnnaise?) commercial. Exposure was very tricky. For light on Mariah
the gaffer, Aris, hand held a 250 Watt pocket par at about chest level
and backed up with Mariah and Will Yun Lee. However the general square
was lit only by the giant video monitors on the buildings. The luminance
level varied with whatever was on the monitors at any given time and
could go as low as T-0.7 or as bright as T-2.
So, there we are ... standing in the middle of this huge commercial
intersection akin to Time Square in New York in the drizzling rain,
waiting for Mariah's limo to pull up and surprise all of these passersby.
You could feel that whatever was about to happen was really going to
be huge and unstoppable. Given the difficulties we had experienced getting
to this point I really expected Joseph to be frustrated and anxious.
But he was so happy and into the madness; he was smiling and laughing!
He knew what we were getting into and he was diggin' every whacky moment
of it. At the heart of Tokyo, with the Steadicam on the fly, guerilla
insanity.
We managed to get Mariah across, but those darn Shibuya video monitors
went really dark. The crowd was a very important element in the shot
so I pushed the film on the cameras with zoom lenses each by a couple
stops. I knew in telecine I could finess the disparity in luminance
and I certainly wanted to have something to work with in the crowds.
December 20, nearly one month later. Having gotten some good "flavor"
shots in Japan with Mariah and the crowds and also some miscellaneous
background vignettes we still did not have any performance. As a result
the U.S. portion of the video would be much more demanding and intense
than originally planned. Our shoot coming between December 20 and 23,
right before the Christmas holidays, posed the added challenge that
many vendors and personnel had already left town and the prep overlapped
with the shoot for DMX's X'S GONNA GET YA.
Joseph chose a visual style for the video with a strong influence of
"Speed Racer" and Godzilla movies interpreted via late 1960's/early
70's futurism such as "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "THX
1138." The color scheme we worked with was also retro. Rather than
the intense washes of color common in many videos today, Joseph chose
to work with a uniform base of light gray splashed with pops of color
here and there. It was a surreal, groovy trip into the future-past.
Prior to the commencement of shooting in Los Angeles the track changed
from THE ONE to BOY ( I NEED YOU) featuring Cam'Ron. This complicated
things in that now, into the retro-futurist Tokyo fantasy Joseph needed
to weave footage incorporating Cam'Ron's part of the duet and also accommodate
a Mariah/Bianca car chase which Mariah wanted. This meant that with
our existing sets Joseph needed to rethink the video on the spot, shuffle
the concept, add the new elements and conceive a dramatic and cohesive
music video. I needed to reassess my approach to the photography, and
really shoot from the hip as Joseph was reinventing from moment to moment
during the filming.
For light on Mariah I wanted to find something special for her rather
than just dragging a light off the truck. With gaffer Mark Lindsay I
considered several possibilities, including some pretty unconventional
units. After testing some of these lights on set I decided to go with
the Altman Scoop, a suggestion of Mark's, slightly modified to give
a more beautiful sparkle in her eye and control the spill on the background
for closeups. We used a leko for the longer shots.
I always like to explore unconventional tools and approaches in my cinematography.
It is a habit which comes from my background in fine art and the necessity
of improvisation in independent features. There are so many wonderful
photographic possibilities both in the light of the world around us
each day and night, and in my imagination, that anytime I can pull in
a certain house lamp, or reflective material and use that instead of
a movie light or bounce board I find that I open up entirely new modes
and nuances of expression.
One of the more elaborate setups involved a climactic sword fight on
top of Los Angeles' Aon building, 63 stories up and with a breath-taking
nighttime view. We were very limited by where we could place the lights
so I brought in some colored Kinoflo tubes and sculpted them around
the roof in a way that defined and enhanced the geography. The abstraction
in this approach also served to give us the suggestion of a future place
and time. The rooftop footage is some of my favorite from the video.
There were times during the Los Angeles portion of the shoot when we
were spread out in three separate units simultaneously on the roof,
the 39th floor and Wilshire Blvd. below - with me overseeing the work
of each. I never stopped and neither did the crew. But when you are
working with great people it is always a pleasure and I really enjoyed
the immensity of this job.
We shot a tremendous amount of footage for this video and there were
quite a few really cool bits which did not make the cut. If only there
was some way to exhibit music video out-takes! Mariah was really sweet,
truly a pleasure to work with and very much a trooper. From chaotic
masses of Tokyo fans swarming on her to long, long, long hours she remained
bright, charming and enthusiastic ... and she still looked great in
closeups even at the very end of the day. Of course, working with Joseph
is always fun and challenging. He is an artist and a perfectionist.
He is busy right now finishing up his first feature film "Torque"
for Warner Brothers so we were very lucky that he managed to work in
time for this video.
- written by Brad Rushing
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