I found this video uploaded to YouTube by a Japanese fan. “It is a band of best for me,” part of the description reads, as awkwardly translated by Google. And indeed the D4 were a band of best for many Japanese, enjoying some success there.
But the video for “Heartbreaker” is an Auckland production, directed by previous D4 video-maker Greg Page. The video begin by introducing us to a couple of saucy leather-clad rockabilly vixens, hanging out in an old yard, as such video characters do. They’re shot in grainy black and white, which slightly mythologises this intriguing pair.
We also meet the D4 indoors, playing in a grimy room with walls streaked in (artfully applied) grey paint. It’s hot in colour but with a very minimal palette, as if the bad girls have sucked all the energy from their lives. The song is tense and serious and the video focuses on those aspects. The band is relatively restrained, and even the massive rock-out at the end is more conservative than what they’ve previously done.
There’s a bit of fun with camera movement. As well as the camera doing typically pervy pans over the women, it jumps and skips over the band, as if it’s not quite sure what to make of these guys. They’re hurtin’ – don’t want to get too close.
The video ends with the two bad girls strolling over the Haslett Street-Waima Street motorway overbridge (also seen in Pluto’s “Bananas in the Mist” video from the same funding round).
There’s something very pleasing about this video. It’s relatively low budget, a simple concept but it looks really good. It’s just about making a music video that promotes the single, so that fans in Japan can enjoy a bit of the D4 as much as fans in New Zealand.
Best bit: the attention given to Jimmy’s isolated, one-word backing vocal performance of “cheatin'”.
Director: Greg Page
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision
Next… a one-man show.