It’s Nancy Sinatra’s 70th birthday next week, so let's celebrate!
I have so much respect for Nancy, but sometimes when I watch her music clip for "Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" I am filled with longing. Not for someone to shoot me down, even though she does make one's own metaphorical murder appear quite feminine and alluring. But for something
more from her performance in the video.
Don't get me wrong. I totally get the subtlety of it. Her character is like the one in
Sunset Boulevard when, [SPOILER ALERT] at the end, you find out that the narrator has been dead all along. She's perfectly understated, like some sad, slaughtered angel singing to us from the afterlife.
There she sits. Iconic. Glacial. In that pink fringe dress and those fabulous boots. But—she doesn’t move.
At least, not until the very end, when she grins as if there's nothing on earth she would rather do than get emotionally butchered by her defacto, and then inexplicably
rolls off stage. I've never seen anything like it. And I totally love it.
But for argument's sake let's just say that because I’m Gen Y, I'm impatient and demanding and I have a short attention span. I want colour and movement from my film clips, goddammit! And if Nancy isn't going to give it to me, then I’m going to scour the internet until I find it.
Luckily, "Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" has been recorded on videotape many times over the years by many different artists. And from these examples we can glean:
SOME LESSONS FOR THE NOVICE FILMMAKER
Dalida
Dalida is Italian, and perhaps for this reason she felt that sprinkling some literal backstory into her performance would make it more accessible to an international audience.
LESSON: Dalida's sad, frozen flashbacks are so boring they make Nancy Sinatra’s clip look like
Man vs Wild. This mournful clip is what you
don't do.
Equipe 84
Here, Equipe 84 [Note to self: Check if they are related to
Eiffel 65], show us how a live, Italian TV performance should be done.
LESSON: Black and white needn’t be boring!
At least, not when you have musicians who understand what the term "stage business" and "props" mean. Is that a rope? Cool! Why, I'll pretend it's a guitar chord. Wait, now it's a lasso!
Vanilla Fudge
This one is absolute gold as well. From the first chord, you pretty much know you are in for a dramatic, psychedelic, prog-rock epic. But for the budding music video film director, there is an important lesson to be learned from it:
LESSON: Effects.
Layered, sixties, video effects. And LOTS of them.
Ania Dąbrowska
This is from Polish singer Ania's recent album, and the film clip is mostly really uninspiring, except for a flash of
Schindler's List-esque colour and one little moment that kicks in at exactly 2.34:
LESSON:
There is still a place in the video clip landscape of 2010 for saxophonists to get blasted by eight billion knots of smoke machine while they play their solo. And don't you ever forget that.
Sheila
This jaunty little clip is educational in the way it illustrates that setting a film clip at The Peach Pit is sort of unexciting. Although, having your star break out into a cute, wiggly little dance at the end can resuscitate viewers somewhat.
LESSON: "Bang Bang" is the same in French as it is in both English and Italian.
The Raconteurs
One lesson, and one lesson only here.
LESSON: Jack White's explosive vocal outbursts render visual hijinkery useless. Just film it. Live. It'll be good.
Cher
Look, let’s get this Cher thing straight, which is not a sentence you can normally say unless you erase images like
this,
this and
this from your mind.
Sonny Bono wrote the song, and it was Cher who originally sang it. Not Nancy. Cher's version got to number 2 on the US charts in 1966, and Nancy covered it that same year.
Cher released another version in 1987, when she was a lot more comfortable with stonewash denim.
And this, my darling future video clip directors, is what a video clip should probably always, always,
always be.
LESSON: This clip is what rock eisteddfods would be if they weren’t 100% drug and alcohol free.
Raquel Welch
Finally we get to the real reason I’m here today. This clip is brilliant. Raquel's subdued opening belies the camp, outlandish Broadway razzle-dazzle it becomes.
LESSON: Murder needn’t be bloody and horrific! It can be really camp fun.
I never thought a woman with the surname ‘Welch’—which need I point out, sounds a lot like "squelch"—could be so firm. Firm in her hip-swivelling conviction that her baby shot her dead. Firm in her bosoms also, during some almost impossibly bouncy choreography.
Your life will never be the same after you watch this. It’s grotesquely entertaining and entertainingly grotesque. No need to thank me.