Director: Ben Mor
Production Company: RSA / Black Dog London
Client: Fergie
Locations: London
Location Brief: Nightclub, London Underground, brutalist architecture and multiple urban London locations

Fergie Music Video Locations Across London

I worked with director Ben Mor and RSA / Black Dog London scouting Fergie music video locations for Like It Ain’t Nuttin’, from her Double Dutchess album.

It was a very busy few days of filming across London, shooting at far more locations than you would normally expect for a music video.

But hey, it was Fergie.

The shoot took us all over London, and with a group of incredibly talented dancers, there was always a temptation to try something slightly more ambitious on the day.

At Charing Cross station, somebody had the idea of doing some impromptu handstands while coming down the escalator.

The dancers were more than capable of it.

Health and safety, less convinced.

Our film officer very quickly put a stop to that idea, regardless of how talented the dancers were.

And they really were.

We also filmed a sequence at the Barbican, which has a strict “no dancing” rule.

Yes.

No dancing.

A slightly unusual restriction when you’re filming a music video with professional dancers.

So the dancers had to improvise.

They could move.

They could perform.

They just couldn’t technically dance.

Somehow, they made it work.

The nightclub gave us another classic music video moment.

We had a hard out at the location because the club opened to the public at 7pm. Of course, in true music video style, the shoot started running over and we wanted to keep filming.

The club owner was actually very accommodating.

“Fine,” he said. “You can carry on upstairs.”

Perfect.

We wanted to film until around 9pm, so we moved the unit onto the top floor and carried on shooting.

What I hadn’t fully appreciated was exactly what sort of club we were filming in.

It was a serious goth club.

By the time we finally wrapped, I was desperately trying to get cameras, lighting and all the production equipment out of the building while the club was now fully open.

Hundreds of goths had descended on the place.

I was attempting to wrap a full film unit in the middle of what felt like a North London goth carnival.

Black leather. Huge boots. Elaborate make-up. Music pumping.

And somewhere amongst it all, our crew were trying to carry flight cases and lighting equipment down the stairs.

Complete chaos.

But somehow we got everything out.

Just another glamorous night in the music video business.

The Fergie music video locations took us all across London. It was a fast, ambitious shoot — exactly the sort of job where you’re constantly moving, wrapping one location and immediately thinking about the next.

Here are some of my original location scout photos from the shoot.