Talk about starting off with a bang!
Beyoncé and Jay Z have released the first video from "Bang Bang," a three-part short movie trilogy they created with director Dikayl Rimmasch. The trilogy was first shown during the couple's On the Run tour.
The singer, 33, and the rapper, 44, play outlaws speeding through the California desert. They worked with Rimmasch to develop the story. "In my first conversation on the telephone with Jay Z he explained his concept of On the Run. He said: 'We're not trying to do this literally. It's not that we're Bonnie and Clyde. We're on the run from everything. On the run from becoming a cliché. On the run from doing the same thing again.' Everything he mentioned was a level of consciousness he has for staying alive as an entertainer and as a human being," the director tells Nowness. "He wanted to keep it more abstract because for him it was very abstract. How do you stay new, not just to your audience but also yourself?"
The "Bang Bang" shoot took two days.
"Just before we started shooting on the first day, I was introduced to Beyoncé and Jay Z in their trailer," Rimmasch says. "They didn't really know what I was going to do, so I said, 'I'm going to shoot for five minutes. We're going to process the footage, I'll bring it back for you to look at it, and that's basically what the footage is going to look like.' We picked a very particular, beautiful moment with Beyoncé in the mirrors, we processed the footage in a couple minutes and brought it back, and she thought it was beautiful. Jay Z came out and we shot for five minutes, with him and the cigar, and did the same thing."
Regarding his favorite "Bang Bang" moments, he says, "It was a thrill to photograph the scene with Beyoncé in the hotel room so intimately and get those moments. There's this footage screened on On the Run from Jay Z's 40th birthday party and home footage of Beyoncé traveling. That to me is still the most powerful stuff. At the end of the day they have all the human behavior that everyone else has."
What does Rimmasch think of the experience as a whole? "Beyoncé and Jay Z are two very intelligent, insightful and thoughtful people, in an almost low-key way. Which is how they got to where they are. They are very aware of people's attitudes and what energy they are bringing," he tells Nowness. "Once you fully realize that, then the pressure comes off and you just have to do what you're good at."
On the Run Tour: Beyoncé and Jay Z premieres Sept. 20 on HBO.