Talking to the Co-Director of Rihanna's "BBHMM" Music Video

By now you’ve heard about it or seen it for yourself:

Rihanna

’s controversial "BBHMM" music video follows a kidnapping narrative. It’s been equally harrowed as misogynistic and heralded as empowering. Any way you slice it, Rihanna's behaving badly. The theme of the video has seeds in reality, as Rihanna sued her former accountant for mismanaging her money.

In 2014

, she settled in court for $10,000,000. The video follows her through a revengeful heist, replete with more blood and breasts than a lackey can shake a

cash cannon

at.

The Creators Project spoke with Leo Berne, one of the directors from, Megaforce, the makers of the cinematic video feat that is "Bitch Better Have My Money." The the Paris-based creative agency is known for their videos, including the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Sacrilege," and "Give Me All Your Luvin'" for Madonna featuring M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj.

The Creators Project: There is a strong undercurrent of 80s American classic cinema in the video. How did you explain the concept of the video to Rihanna?

Leo Berne: Rihanna explained a short brief to us of the core idea. The main concept was kidnapping a girl [Rachel Roberts] and putting her in a trunk, traveling with the girl, in the end arriving at the girl's husband's [Mads Mikkelsen] mansion and killing the guy who refused to pay Rihanna's character back. From there we had to write a treatment to bring some fresh ideas, give some references, and how we would treat it. How to bring different visually iconic scenes together?

We wondered: "How would Rih spend time with her captive while waiting for the ransom?" thinking it was interesting to play with the kidnapped girl a little more roughly at the beginning of their trip, making her a prey. Rih is like a cat playing with a mouse. More of a sadistic game while she is phoning the guy. But then, the road trip tends to become quite a fun ride. The girl she kidnaps is sometimes having fun with it. They are chilling and partying together. The relationship between them becomes more ambiguous. In the beginning and the end, there is a teasing with the legs coming out of the trunk—the rest of the video makes you wonder whose legs those, are and the ambiguous relationship with the kidnapee makes it more mysterious, less obvious.

BBHMM video outtake. ✈️

A video posted by M͛E͛G͛A͛F͛O͛R͛C͛E͛ / Leo (@leo_berne) on Jul 7, 2015 at 7:53am PDT

From the very beginning did you know that you wanted it to be such a mystery?

Even during the shoot, we were still discussing what to say and what to show. It’s a hip-hop track and it’s never easy to make a narrative out of a hip-hop song. The track doesn’t sound especially cinematic. The rhythm of the song is very particular, a challenge to tell a story over it.

When writing the treatment, we played the song over many videos over it to see what works and what doesn’t work with the flow of the music. We watched movies, music videos, documentaries to see what was sticking with the video and the pace of the track; camera moves, slow motions, narrative techniques. We decided to make the most narrative parts in the very beginning and at the very end. The middle is much more visual and lighter, narrative-wise. We focused more on making impactful images than building a complex story.

Can you name tell us what you watched for inspiration.

Death Proof by Tarantino, Thelma and Louise, and even some of our own music videos. We watched our video "Sacrilege" for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. We were told she liked the treatment and the storytelling of that video so we wondered, could we be that complex with the story? On this video it was more difficult to focus on the story, so that’s why it helped us as well to tell ourselves the story in the middle had to be way more visual.

@realrachelroberts on #BBHMMvideo we directed with Riri

A photo posted by M͛E͛G͛A͛F͛O͛R͛C͛E͛ / Leo (@leo_berne) on Jul 2, 2015 at 9:53am PDT

Did you watch the movies with Rihanna in the room? How did you relate the themes to her?

We showed her the Jonathan Glazer commercial for Wrangler, "Follow the Yellow Brick Road." It’s a really great commercial. It’s a story of road trip that’s really well done. It’s pretty visual and not narrative. It was something we showed to Rihanna it is something we can do to show more fragments of things happening.

Jonathan Glazer: Wrangler - "Follow the Yellow Brick Road" from Straight Up Films on Vimeo.

How was it to direct her?

She was really involved because it is her story. She had some objection to some shots and she loved come others. On the set she works with a movement coach for some of her performance parts. She was really into her role when it comes to the acting. She was really quite natural because it was her story.

Was it real weed that Rihanna smokes in the video? And did that ever get in the way of filmmaking?

I don't know but it smelled good.

The narrative for the video is violent and ambiguous. Is this something that you, as a director, consider cinematic?

When we were discussing with her, it was obvious she wanted to surprise people and play a bad role, but to be honest we were surprised by people's reactions to the violence. We like to approach things in a cinematic way. We didn’t think it was that violent. It’s not as violent as a TV show like Game of Thrones or any other thriller.

Maybe people find it violent because they are surprised to see Rihanna like this. They are expecting big stars to show the way or how to behave, how to be cool. This video doesn’t tell people how to behave. It is actually amoral. Maybe there is confusion on this? Maybe people shouldn’t always expect pop stars to deliver a particular message? For us, it’s a piece of narration. It’s fiction and we don't take it seriously, it's more about style and entertainment.

@sitabellan & @trustmedaddy on BBHMM video we directed

A photo posted by M͛E͛G͛A͛F͛O͛R͛C͛E͛ / Leo (@

leo_berne) on Jul 2, 2015 at 11:48am PDT

Click here to check out The Creators Project's documentary on Megaforce.

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