No Comparison Between Britney Spears And Lady Gaga, Says Video Choreographer

Robbie Daw | February 1, 2011 8:56 am

Jonas Åkerlund, director of Britney Spears’ upcoming “Hold It Against Me” music video, may have also done Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” and “Telephone” clips, but that’s where the similarities between the two pop stars ends, says choreographer Brian Friedman. Catch him talking to MTV News about how he motivated Britney on the “Hold It” set below. Friedman and Spears go way back, to his days of choreographing videos like “I’m A Slave 4 U,” “Boys” and “Me Against The Music.”

In this interview he discussed the fact that Jonas’ wife B. Åkerlund styled Britney for the “Hold It Against Me” clip. “The styling for this video is beyond what Britney has done before,” he told MTV. “B. Åkerlund did the styling for it, and I can say that it is not ‘Britney does Gaga.’ That is not what’s happening with this. Gaga has her own niche, and although B. has worked with Gaga before, she’s not giving Britney anything that Gaga would wear.”

Brian explained that improvisation comes in to play in shots where Spears is by herself. “One of the little tricks that I like to do is stand right off camera and scream words at her to try and get motivation from her and coach her through the little scenario that she’s in, so we did that in this video. And I know there was a picture posted of a bunch of microphones around her face, and that’s one of the scenes in particular where I was screaming at her on the side, in a good way.”

Friedman continued, “Tiger! I scream tiger. When we first started working and I had her back in the studio, I was referring to how she danced when we were working together in the past, when we were doing ‘Slave,’ ‘Toxic,’ like some of those things. She used to have a prowl about her and an attack that to me was like a tiger, so I kept telling her, ‘I want to see the tiger back.”

Are you excited to see Britney on the prowl in her “Hold It Against Me” video?