Give IT Away (Red Hot Chili Peppers Song) - Music Video

Music Video

The music video for "Give It Away" was made by French fashion photographer and director Stéphane Sednaoui. Kiedis wanted the video to be visually distinct and readily identifiable but disliked much of the material Warner Bros. sent for him to choose from: "I started viewing reels and reels and reels of video directors but nothing looked good to me. Everything was the same, boring, homogenized, contrived shit." Upon finding Sednaoui's reel, however, Kiedis noticed it was "like nothing else. It was slower and poetic, shot in black and white. It seemed like authentic art, not something shot for MTV." He and Flea met with Sednaoui to talk about the video, for which the director proposed a "very desolated very graphic landscape," while heavily focusing on the band members with little to no outside influence. It was decided that the video would be filmed in black and white while Sednaoui took the idea of painting the band members with silver acrylic from previous photo shoots he had done. Sednaoui recalls that he was "amazed by what gave me because they went far far far beyond what I was expecting and I think that's one of my best experiences in that regard". The overall mood of the video was intended to be a personification of the song, which is upbeat and lively.

Sednaoui experimented with a variety of cinematography techniques including wide-angle lenses, shots from below the subjects, superimposition, vertically cut screens displaying different angles of the same shot, reverse film effects, multiple lighting situations and flashy clothing to convey his concept. Frusciante noted the feeling of the video to be extremely vibrant and over the top: "When it was us just painting ourselves silver and wearing these big silver boots and stuff, I mean it felt like glam rock or something." The video begins with a wide-angle shot of Flea in a desert setting wearing pants with several gold colored horns protruding from each leg. The bassist is standing in a meditative stance and brings his arms together above his head when the music begins to play. The video then transitions between a variety of shots edited together that consist of the four band members standing with their eyes closed; the band dancing around in a dimly lit setting; a ground view of Frusciante playing a reflective silver Fender Stratocaster in between his legs while wearing pants made up entire of small pieces of mirror; the band members moving around with full makeup on; and the band members dancing frenziedly. Kiedis adopted a deliberately outlandish wardrobe which incorporated gold lipstick, thinly braided hair, revealing meshed shorts and bright silver boots.

During the backwards guitar solo, Frusciante was filmed waving a large aluminum ribbon; Kiedis was initially apprehensive about Sednaoui's desire for the guitarist to do so, believing he would tell the director "'Fuck you and take that dancing ribbon and shove it up your French ass, buddy' but gladly went off and made love to the air with this dancing ribbon. He would have danced around for hours with that thing." The footage was edited in reverse to complement the solo. While some of the scenes in the video were planned with a storyboard, much of it was improvised or made up on the spot over the two-day shoot. During a particular scene Kiedis began to move his tongue flamboyantly to dramatically accentuate the lyrics, which Sednaoui believed was extremely beneficial to the exuberant nature of the video. Where the video begins in what appears to be the daytime, it concludes at dusk with silhouettes of the band members running into the setting sun.

The video—which cost an estimated $140,000 to produce—was completed while Kiedis and Frusciante were on a promotional trip through Europe in support of Blood Sugar Sex Magik. When the vocalist first saw it, he was "more hysterically ecstatic about that piece of visual footage than anything ever done." Warner Bros. executives, however, were worried that the content would be "too weird" or "too artsy" for the general public and favored a more traditional premise in contrast to the experimental approach Sednaoui took. The video was ultimately released without being edited by the record label; since then it has been widely credited as being a considerable factor in the Red Hot Chili Peppers' success and greatly increased their international popularity. Journalist Jeff Apter noted the video's "funky brew of goofy looks, a subtle invasive hook, Flea's spindly fingered baseline and Kiedis' crotch-hugging shorts made the clip essential viewing across MTV throughout the last few months of 1991." Steve Huey of Allmusic commented in his review of the song that "MTV jumped all over the visually distinctive video." It was nominated for three awards—"Best Alternative Video", "Breakthrough Video", and "Best Art Direction"—at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards, for which it won the latter two.