The most expensive music video ever made cost more than RM20 million
Music videos have been around for many years, but the modern form of music videos came into huge prominence with the advent of MTV in the early 1980s. Primarily being a marketing device, their complexity and hence costs have increased steadily over the years, and nowadays a music video costing more than USD1 million for a 4 minute song is the norm.
You can say the music video craze peaked in the 1990s, because 8 of the most expensive music videos ever made are from that era, the other 2 from the 21st century.
The champ is Michael Jackson & Janet Jackson’s “Scream”, directed by Mark Romanek, made in 1995.
It cost USD7 million; that’s equivalent to USD9.6 million in 2007.
Length is about 4 minutes and 45 seconds, I’ll leave you to work out how much it costs per second.
It has a science-fiction theme, and went on to win several MTV Video Music Awards and a Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video.
I think nobody would dispute that the video still looks impressive today, even though it was made more than 10 years ago:
Phew, I guess it would take the best of the San Diego accountants to count all that money…
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Wow. Serious stuff. I bet the lighting crew had a fantastic long break after that.
Yes, if we assume that Mark Romanek had the same crew, they also made the 3rd most expensive music video of all time in March of the same year (Madonna’s Bedtime Story which cost USD5 million). It must’ve been one heck of a busy half-year for them.
After that, Romanek didn’t appear in the list anymore.
I have heard From Yesterday by 30 Seconds To Mars’ video cost them $13,000,000