Finally the visuals for Rihanna’s “Work” video has dropped and it’s just as steamy as we all knew it would be …. except we got a two-fer. To everyone’s surprise there were two totally different videos released.
Director X directed the first basement version shot in Toronto while Tim Erem, a Swedish born director, directed the second version (which by the way only took 40 minutes to film), where the pair dance for and with each other in a room bathed in hypnotic shades of lilac.
Shortly after the video dropped, Erem chatted with FADER and explained that his section of the video was part of a bigger, original concept that has since been repurposed for another video project with Rihanna. Check out excerpts of his interview below.
Can you tell me about the original plan and other video?
You can just Google it [laughs].
Ah like the Louis Vuitton horse Rihanna was seen riding?
The horse is still alive. We didn’t kill any horses. Who knows? You might see her on a horse at some later point. You never know [laughs]. I’m not going to get into that, I’m going to keep it as a surprise. Whatever we’ve done with that, according to me, is the best—that’s my baby. That’s something that will come out pretty soon.
Can you talk about the colors in the room? They reminded me of the colors in the “Hotline Bling” video?
I know, it’s funny. It has nothing to do with it, nothing to do with it. We changed the colors like five times before we started shooting. It was yellow and blue first and then we have orange and blue, then orange and red, and then we decided that it should be those colors. It is interesting because after we shot it and I started looking at the footage, I said, it looks like the “Hotline Bling” video. They just loved those colors.
They’re dancing so intimately, can you speak to what direction you gave them for those shots? What was it like?
Interesting [laughs]. It just felt like—they’re really close to each other and they’re friends. They’re really good friends and everything felt so natural. It felt really good. I don’t think this would have been as good with someone else. I’m not going to name names, but this is a perfect match. The track, the video, and everything. It was really intimate and that’s what I think makes the video so good: their whole chemistry, which is just so authentic. They’re two really close friends who are really fucking good performers. READ THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW HERE
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