James Blunt 'Dangerous' by Luc Janin

Jimmy Brown - 28th Sept 2011

The Luc Janin-directed promo for James Blunt's Dangerous is in the rich tradition of single track-shot videos, and bears a passing resemblance in particular to Baillie Walsh's classic Massive Attack vid for Be Thankful - albeit without the striptease.

"The brief was simple: 'a gorgeous/dangerous girl and just a cameo for
James'," Luc explains. "I didn't want to fall into the cliché of a 'pop video' style pretty girl all way through the film, so decided to shoot the POV of the girl instead, and show other girls/people reacting to her. The rest of the concept is inspired from Lipdub videos, usually done by American schools. I thought the most interesting Lipdubs were the ones that were well choreographed rather than the ones trying to be impressive with 6000 extras - and we couldn't afford 6000 extras anyway.

"I was thrilled with the location [Volupte in London's Chancery Lane] - it offered a three-minute walk from the front door of the club to the last room in the second underground level, going through all kind of rooms including the kitchen, so there was the opportunity to include other people than the girls from the club. It also offered very useful short cuts for crew and some of the cast - people appear two or three times so they had to move fast to their second position once the camera passed them.

"It was a very interesting exercise. Making it interesting all the way, avoiding any "dead moment" was very tricky, and it was obviously also tricky to have everyone doing their bit of performance well within the same take. We got it right on the 12th take, I think - just as well, according to the producers it was our last chance to get it right..."