[0:00]But times and attitudes changed. In the last couple of years, the making of pop videos has become a respectable little earner for quite well-known directors when feature film offers have been thin on the ground. Lindsay Anderson tried his hand at one, so did Stephen Frears, and even Federico Fellini was said to be having discussions with both Paul McCartney and Boy George about the possibility of doing a promo. One of the attractions is that there's no lack of money for these videos. John Landis, the maker of spies like us, had more than a million dollars to play around with when he filmed the thriller video for Michael Jackson. Well now Ken Russell, that perennial enfant terrible of the British industry, has set up a company called Sitting Duck. Is that how he regards himself, I wonder, for the sole purpose of making commercials and promos. The most recent of these being Phantom of the Opera.
[0:53]Russell's been renowned for his highly individual interpretations of music and images over the past 25 years. However, only in the last year that he's taken to making actual pop promos. Last week, film 86 went along to the less than glamorous set of his latest video shoot in Battersea. Oh, and the fellow dressed as a welder is Elton John.
[1:15]Here we go and play back.
[1:38]left hand arm sort of is yeah, it was against your body and I didn't see your hands. Now what's the attraction of pop promos for a feature director like Ken Russell? Well, it's uh it's so enjoyable. It's um I know music and movement and pictures and uh the whole scene. And also uh the thing about it is you nowadays you you get far more um freedom in music videos than you do in in features. You because the concept's usually left to the director. Obviously, he has to has to be approved by um Elton in this case, and one works together with Elton, but they want imagination. And in the cinema, you know, I mean um they seem to want less and less of it and more and more talkies and less and less pictures and and and exuberance. Russell worked initially with Elton John on the feature film Tommy, arguably a forerunner for today's pop videos in its style and treatment. What did he think of it now? I think it's holds up pretty well because um I mean the music was good and the lyrics were good and yeah, I'm quite happy with it.
[3:02]Well, I've worked with Ken originally on Tommy and I enjoyed that very much. It was only like doing Top of the Pops for three days. It wasn't really like, but he was um, he made me walk in those huge shoes, which not many people would be able to do because I'm scared of heights. And I respect him a lot then and and the Nikita thing, I'd heard that he'd done a video with Cliff Richard. And um we just decided to ask him to do it, and he did it and it was very, very pleased with that. And Russell Mulcahy did Rapper Up, so I usually work with two or three directors. And we thought it'd be nice for Ken to do this as well. It's, you know, he's very funny to work for. When I first did Nikita, I thought, my God, what's he going to do? But um I was quite surprised now he was uh very, very sort of restrained. I mean, I would I don't mind if he, I mean, no, he he's um, his ideas were much more sober than I thought they would be, but it really worked out well.
[4:11]For a director with such a reputation for courting controversy, it's surprising that Russell's videos are so well conventional. How does he counter that?
[4:21]I really do try and go along with the what I think the material's about and the tempo of the material. I think some directors actually, video directors don't don't care. They want very fast cutting, whether it's a fast up tempo thing or not. Well, I and I also trying to get the human side. I'm trying to get behind the uh fireworks, though I'm all in favor of fireworks.
