Music Video
The music video for "Say You'll Be There" was directed by Vaughan Arnell, produced by Adam Saward and filmed on 23 September 1996, in the Mojave Desert, located in California. It was inspired by the films Pulp Fiction and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, the latter in which led the girls to adopt fictional identities, an idea that Halliwell came up with.
The video features the group as a band of female techno-warriors, who use martial arts and high-tech ninja influenced weapons to capture a hapless male, played by American model Tony Ward, who happens to appear in a blue Dodge Charger Daytona. The clip is presented as a narrative, with movie credits at the start introducing the Spice Girls as fantastic characters.
Melanie Chisholm played "Katrina Highkick", Geri Halliwell's alter-ego was "Trixie Firecracker", Emma Bunton took on the role of "Kung Fu Candy", Victoria Beckham played "Midnight Miss Suki", and "Blazin' Bad Zula" was Melanie Brown's alter-ego. The shots of male bondage are unexplained, and function as symbols of male disempowerment, just as the rest of the clip serves to assert the power and fighting abilities of the women. At the end the group captures a confused man who appears in his pick-up truck. He is carried off on the roof of the car as a trophy.
The video won for Best Pop Video at the 1996 Smash Hits! Awards, for Best Video at the 1997 BRIT Awards, and was nominated for the Viewer's Choice at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards. It won the FAN.tastic Video honour—given by online Billboard readers—at the 1997 Billboard Music Video Awards, and was also nominated for Best New Artist in a Video and Best Pop/Rock Clip.
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Famous quotes containing the words music and/or video:
“Did the kiss of Mother Mary
Put that music in her face?
Yet she goes with footstep wary,
Full of earth’s old timid grace.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“These people figured video was the Lord’s preferred means of communicating, the screen itself a kind of perpetually burning bush. “He’s in the de-tails,” Sublett had said once. “You gotta watch for Him close.””
—William Gibson (b. 1948)