Duran Duran (1983 video)
Duran Duran is a video compilation, by the band of the same name, that is sometimes unofficially referred to in print as the Duran Duran video album or Duran Duran: The First 11 Videos. The pioneering video album won a 1984 Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (Billboard magazine for the week ending 24 November 1984).
Duran Duran
March 1983
1981–1983
55 min
Background[edit]
The planning for the "video album" had begun early in the band's career, as Duran Duran and their management realised the power of video as an artistic marketing tool.[1] Some of the videos shot during this period (1981–1983) were for songs never released as singles, including "Lonely in your Nightmare", "Night Boat" and "The Chauffeur".[1]
The release date, March 1983, was chosen to coincide with the promotion of the band's No. 1 single "Is There Something I Should Know?" and the American re-issue of their first album, Duran Duran.[1]
Future filmmaker Russell Mulcahy directed the majority of this "travelogue-style" collection of videos, featuring exotic locations and cinematic style that made Duran Duran's name as a video band. Videos for tracks such as "Hungry Like the Wolf" and "Save a Prayer" were showpieces of this style.[1]
Prior to the video album's release, the "video EP" Duran Duran Video 45 came out in two versions. The first one had the "clean" or "day version" of "Girls on Film" alongside "Hungry Like The Wolf", while the other had the uncensored "night versions" of each.[1]
In February 1984, the video album Duran Duran won a Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video, while Video 45 won the Best Short Form award.
The collection was originally released with stereophonic sound on LaserDisc (the original optical disc format) and Capacitance Electronic Disc formats, as well as in the Beta Hi-Fi and VHS Hi-Fi videotape formats. It has yet to be released on DVD, although Sing Blue Silver, Duran Duran's 1984 tour documentary, and Arena, a 1985 long-form music video/concert film, both have been.[1]
The videos[edit]
"Rio" (Russell Mulcahy)[edit]
Duran Duran travelled to the island of Antigua in May 1982 to film the music video for "Rio", which featured iconic images of the band in colourful Antony Price silk suits, singing and playing around on a yacht sailing the Caribbean. Short segments show band members trying to live out their assorted daydreams, only to be teased, tormented, and made fools of by a body-painted vixen.[1]
"Planet Earth" (Russell Mulcahy)[edit]
Fairly primitive by the band's later standards, the video was shot on a sound stage at St John's Wood and features the band (dressed in New Romantic fashions) playing the song on a white stage tricked out with special effects to look like a platform made of ice or crystal. Interspersed with the performance are shots of the band members alongside the four elements. The video focused closely on the band members' faces, highlighting their varied good looks. The instrumental middle section features friends of the band from the Rum Runner nightclub, dancing in outlandish outfits. At the end of the video, singer Simon Le Bon leaps from the stage, caught in a freeze frame shot above an apparently bottomless abyss.[1]
"Lonely in Your Nightmare" (Russell Mulcahy)[edit]
The video begins with Le Bon finding an old photograph of the aforementioned freeze-frame closing of the "Planet Earth" video on the floor of an abandoned building in London. The scene segues into a lovely yet melancholy album track containing a series of colour sections, in which a beautiful woman in a flowing dress wanders about the tropical settings of Sri Lanka, drawing the attention of various band members. Many of the scenes are shot across the Unawatuna Bay from Galle Fort, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and of the mansion at Taprobane Island further along the southeast coast. [1] The elusive woman appears again in black-and-white scenes filmed in London, disappearing whenever the band members turn to look for her. The music for the video is the David Kershenbaum re-mix of the studio track, which contains an alternate chorus lyric in the closing section of the song.
"My Own Way" (Russell Mulcahy)[edit]
The video was filmed in a St. Johns Wood studio that was decorated entirely in red, black and white. The band performs the fast-paced song in close-up, while flamenco dancers twirl in the background and a colourful parrot sits on the synthesisers, pecking at the keyboardist's fingers.
"Hungry Like the Wolf" (Russell Mulcahy)[edit]
The lush and cinematic video filmed in Sri Lanka was filled with shots of jungles, rivers, elephants, cafes and marketplaces evoking the exotic atmosphere of swashbuckler adventure films like Gunga Din and Raiders of the Lost Ark. The storyline reflects the lyrics "I'm on the hunt, I'm after you," with Le Bon pursuing a tiger-like woman through obstacles in the jungle, culminating in a final chase and struggle in a clearing. In the meantime, other band members hunt for Le Bon. One shot of Le Bon's head rising out of the water in slow motion (it was actually filmed backwards) is an homage to an identical shot in Apocalypse Now. Scenes were shot at the night markets of the capital city of Colombo, the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage and Yala National Park, home to much of Sri Lanka's leopard population, as reflected in the leopard-woman depicted in the video. The imagery itself is a reference to an ancient Sri Lankan legend of a demonic figure, appearing as a female leopard bent on seducing men and subsequently devouring them. A contemporary reference to this legend can be found in Sri Lankan-born author Christopher Ondaatje's book The Last Colonial. Contrary to the track's title, there are no wolves in Sri Lanka.[1]
"Night Boat" (Russell Mulcahy)[edit]
The video for the atmospheric track became a mini-horror film shot on the Caribbean island of Antigua. Brief dialogue before the music starts includes Le Bon's recitation of one of Mercutio's speeches from Romeo and Juliet. Band members gather in a small beach village as the sun sets, only to be separated and set upon by zombies one by one, until the ragged night boat arrives to carry Le Bon away. It is possible that this video is a homage to the Italian horror film Zombi 2, with settings and zombies that look very much like those in the film. This video was filmed in May 1982, a year before Michael Jackson began working on the video "Thriller", which also featured zombies.
"Girls on Film" (Godley & Creme)[edit]
The hit single was accompanied by an audacious video filmed at Shepperton Studios in July 1981. The 1983 video album contains the uncensored full-length "night version", which is over six minutes in length. The band performs on an elevated stage behind a model's catwalk, which resembles a boxing ring, as various scantily clad women act out a series of erotic vignettes. A number of these scenarios feature mild depictions of BDSM and lesbian fetishes as well as a recurring theme of seduction and abandonment:[1]