When you're the single most influential pop star of all time, you can get away with a lot. Michael Jackson already had eight mega hit studio albums behind him, including, of course, the best selling record of all time (Thriller), when he released HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I in 1995. "Scream," a duet with his sister Janet Jackson, appeared on the second disc of the album and became the first song in history to debut in the top five of the Billboard Top 100.
Armed with more cache than anyone else on the planet, and a sister on the track who is also a superstar in her own right, Michael Jackson got to do whatever he wanted when it came to creating the music video for "Scream." And the sky was the limit - "Scream" cost an estimated $7 million to make. Where did all that cash go? We set out to find out. Here's why "Scream" is the most expensive music video ever made.
10 The Illusion of Zero Gravity
Go ahead and catch yourself up on the "Scream" video if you've never seen it before, or if you need a refresher - we'll wait. The video's most central feature was its illusion of zero gravity, with the brother and sister pair dancing upside down on the ceiling of a revolving spaceship. Special effects cost a pretty penny, so make them look sharp and extremely realistic, director Mark Romanek had to splurge.
9 The Spaceship Was Actually 11 Sets
Building high quality sets doesn't come cheap, and "Scream" required eleven of them to create the inside of a futuristic and dizzyingly rotating spaceship. At $5 million, the concept was pricy and daring, but it was what Michael and his team wanted. It definitely paid off, and the space age style influenced many artists' later videos, including TLC, Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, and Britney Spears.
8 It Was On A Ridiculously Tight Deadline
You know the saying, "You can pick two: fast, good, and cheap"? "Scream" was fast and good...so it couldn't be cheap. MJJ Productions set a deadline of five weeks from when they approached him to when the video was due. Film production is already an expensive ordeal, and to make it happen quickly, costs for every element doubled and tripled their normal amount.
7 ...And It Went Into Overtime
It's sort of counterintuitive: you pay more to get something done faster, then when you go beyond that timeframe, shouldn't that mean it will cost...closer to what the normal timeframe should have cost? If this reasoning checks out to you, you've probably never worked in film production. Expediting production will significantly increase your costs, then if you go beyond that, you're looking at exponentially more than what you would have paid if you'd set out to produce it on that timeline in the first place. The video shoot went over by several days, causing costs to skyrocket.
6 Michael And Janet's Entourages
When you reach the height of fame that these two have, you get to put your besties on payroll for pretty much just hanging out. It's a pretty enviable gig! Michael and Janet Jackson wanted the moral support of all their nearest and dearest while making this awe-inspiring video, and Michael and Janet Jackson get what Michael and Janet Jackson want.
5 Assistants...And Their Assistants
Michael and Janet Jackson can't be Michael and Janet Jackson without a pretty substantial team of assistants. And all those assistants have assistants. And those assistants...well, you get the idea. Direction, wardrobe, camera, lighting, sound, makeup, choreography - each one of these departments independently had dozens of employees, so the cost of payroll for the video was astronimcal.
4 Breaking Guitars
The price tag for the guitars that the Jacksons break in this video is gonna sucker punch anyone with student loans straight in the gut. There was a seemingly endless stash of guitars on set for the smashing bits in the video, and the bill topped out at (take a deep breath) $53,000.
3 The Top Notch Choreography
When you're two of the top dancers of all time, you need top notch choreography to fully be able to show off your talent. It took four choreographers to choreograph "Scream." The Jacksons have Travis Payne, LaVelle Smith Jr., Tina Landon and Sacha Lucashenko to thank for the high energy choreography in this video, and the choreographers received a collective $40,000 for their work.
2 Michael And Janet's Makeup
At $3,000, Michael Jackson's makeup for "Scream" was more expensive than most people's rent for a couple months, and Janet's was more than twice that, clocking in at $8,000. And this is just for them to appear in black and white! But we have to hand it to makeup artist Klexius Kolby (amazing name, by the way): they look killer!
1 Visual Effects
The remote-controlled screens in Michael and Janet's futuristic spacecraft rotate among a variety of different works of art, including Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, and cultural sculptures. Don't forget the video screens on which each sibling appears, and the flying-through-space effect outside the spaceship, and the animation used throughout. All told, the visual effects alone came to around $300,000.