John Urbano looks back as the boy band’s debut album, Up All Night, turns 10.
JOHN URBANO:It came from Sony, who brought me on the project, and myself.
They wanted to have water, they wanted to have beach, we wanted it to be fun.
One Direction in the music video for ‘What Makes You Beautiful’.One Direction/YouTube
And then also, oddly enough, I suggested the Indiana Dunes because I grew up in that area.
So those were the two options, and then we ended up going with Malibu.
You’ve got the boys in the VW bus and then the girls come up in a Bug.
You know how these things go, you show 20 vehicles and the creatives at Sony landed on that.
At the time I don’t really even think the guys were giving that much input.
They just wanted fun vehicles, and those Volks fit the bill.
A lot of the video feels very natural.
Was a lot of that improvised and you just telling them to be playful?
How did you hit on those moments?
A lot of my work is highly crafted improv, so a lot of it was not scripted.
I like to shoot with a shot list, but nothing was storyboarded out.
They came with a ton of energy, so my idea was let’s have activities.
You’d have to tell them to take a break because they were just performing all the time.
Not just singing, but kicking the soccer ball, jumping here, jumping there.
There’s a lot of messing about, but no choreographed dancing.
I feel like that comes with time.
There’s also a really playful bit where they swing Niall in the blanket.
How many times did they drop him?
That’s just one of a million little playful things that they would do.
I don’t know if they did that more than once.
I’ve shot two music videos with them, and that’s what it’s like every time.
They are just so high-energy.
How did it end up being him that got that moment?
Was there already a notion then that he was going to be the big heartthrob?
That is one of my favorite parts of the film still to date, because I love portraits.
He was so close and singing directly to her.
It became iconic for those guys, that moment.
Of course she probably had to go into hiding after that.
[Laughs]
Were the other boys jealous?
Was it like, “Why do you get to do that and I don’t?”
There was never any jealousy.
At least when I was working with them.
They were more egging him on, you know what I mean?
Like, “Go, come on, do it!
Yeah, go!”
They were just were not jealous types.
They were stoked, and probably gave [Harry] a hard time.
Was Harry into it, or was he at all shy or uncomfortable about it?
Harry is not shy.
He does it his own way.
Then he just delivers something beautiful.
Can you elaborate a little bit more on what you mean by doing it his own way?
Whether it was in that sequence or something else in the video?
Looking back, he probably thought I was a madman.
Then, he would just slam-dunk exactly what I was looking for.
What it probably was, looking back on it, is he’s a really good listener.
And when you’re a good listener, you’re not speaking so much.
I was 10 years younger too, so I was a younger director.
So I was over-explaining everything.
I was watching a great artist become who he is today.
This was their debut single, and you shot the video before that ever came out.
Was there a feeling that this song and the boys would become what they became?
And I remember looking back at them and thinking, “This is going to be huge.”
This small little group is witnessing what could be the biggest boy band in history.
And I can remember them wondering who they were.
They actually asked like, “Who are these guys?
Are they famous?”
And I just remember thinking to myself, “You just wait.”
So many things have to line up for you to make it.
I felt that they were going to shoot off the planet.
I felt like magic was happening.
Do you feel like you almost got to spend some of their last quote-unquote normal days with them?
“Normal” meaning that we could do things without them getting mobbed?
We were able to do that.
That, to me, was as normal as it gets.
They were really young and they were about to come to America; we were in England.
And I remember them just talking about girls and how to meet girls in America.
“Is it the same in Europe?
Where do you meet girls at in America?”
How to meet girls in America?You’re not going to have a problem with that."
Because they had no idea what was in store for them.
Are you surprised by the various directions they’ve all gone now?
Do you keep in touch with them?
I keep in touch with one of them.
It comes with an enormous amount of pressure to do what they’ve done.
To start where they started.
It makes me proud to say, “Yeah, I know those guys.”
and “Will you marry me?”
But at the beginning, man, they were just really, really great kids.
