In the spring of 1995, Michael Jackson and his little sister Janet did something they hadn’t done in more than ten years. They teamed up on a song.
The song was “Scream,” and it was a big deal before anyone had even seen the video. When it came out at the end of May that year, it became the first song ever to debut in the top five of the Billboard Hot 100. Fans had waited a long time to hear the two biggest names in the family sing side by side.
The video had to be just as big. So the plan was simple to say and very hard to pull off. Michael and Janet would be alone on a giant spaceship, far away from Earth, with room after room built just for them to have fun in.
The team had about a month to make it happen. The set had 13 separate pieces, and the man who designed it later called the job a “military operation.” Guinness World Records says the shoot took up seven sound stages, with electric guitars flying through the air and faces that change shape on screen.
And it was all filmed in black and white.
If you’ve only ever heard the song on the radio, you’re in for a treat. Keep an eye out for the guitar room, the room with no gravity and the moment the two of them sit down to play a video game against each other. Only one of them wins.
Michael and Janet aboard the spaceship
The video went out on MTV and BET in June 1995, and people couldn’t stop talking about it. At that year’s MTV Video Music Awards it picked up 11 nominations, more than any other video. It took home three of them, including Best Dance Video and Best Art Direction for those spaceship rooms. A few months later it won a Grammy too.
Then there was the price.
The final cost of “Scream” reportedly came to about $7 million. Guinness World Records lists it as the most expensive music video ever made, and that record is still on the books more than 30 years later. Adjusted for today’s money, that’s roughly twice as much.
Not everyone agrees with the number. The man who directed the video has said that a couple of other videos from those same years cost even more, though their budgets were never made public the same way. So the record stands, with a little asterisk that fans still argue about.
Either way, nobody has ever watched “Scream” and thought anyone cut corners. Every room on that ship was built from scratch for a song that runs under five minutes, and the story has Michael and Janet up there all alone.