Craig McDean, the director behind Rihanna’s NSFW video for ‘Kiss It Better’, has spoken about the artistic influences behind the video.
McDean is a photographer and filmmaker, who has previously shot Rihanna for magazines such as T and Vogue. In a new interview with The Fader, he opens up about the process of making the ‘Kiss It Better’ video and the leftfield ideas he and creative partner Masha Vayukova had for the clip.
The T cover film was shot in 45 minutes with one light, and a handheld camera. ‘Kiss it Better’ was shot in L.A. four months later over a very long night,” McDean is quoted as saying. “That said, the music video was based off some of the same ideas, which come from surrealism and dadaism. It all comes from you as a person, your inner inspiration and ideas you’ve had inside for a lifetime.”
McDean also spoke about the prominent use of dice in the video, saying: “Me and Masha watch the same kind of films, we look at a lot of books and art and it all merges together on the set, which is a great playground for visual experiments. Sometimes it’s all about combining things that might not make any sense, [like] subconsciousness and dreams. Dice is such a graphic and surrealistic object so it came into play.”