Behind the music video: Childish Gambino’s Grammy-nominated This Is America
- The video, which featured an execution scene, was directed by Hiro Murai
- This Is America has been played more than 450 million times on YouTube
When searching for a location to film Childish Gambino’s Grammy-nominated clip for This Is America, one of the most discussed music videos in recent memory, producer Danielle Hinde knew she and her team at Doomsday Entertainment needed a lot of room to work.
Born from “the seed of an idea” by Gambino, which is the pseudonym of rapper-singer-writer-actor Donald Glover, the indoor production required space for rows of old cars, including one engulfed in flames; a bound and hooded man on a galloping horse; and a group of dancers working through stereotypical black dance tropes as Glover mugged for the camera.
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As if in one long scene, they needed to shoot Gambino pulling the trigger on an execution-style murder and gunning down a gospel choir, document police and harrowing chases.
“For Donald to make a video like this is really important, and was really brave of him,” Hinde says, adding that in 2018 artists have to be concerned about “the YouTube generation of shaming and comments. They don’t want to be too controversial because then it could start a whole … storm.”
Hinde and Doomsday producer Jason Cole found the setting at the Firestone building and complex in South Gate, California. There, Glover, director Hiro Murai, a bunch of extras and the Doomsday crew went to work orchestrating chaos across nearly 500,000 sq ft of space.