Beyoncé’s “Hold Up” Cinematographer Says Video Was “Like A Playground For Grownups”

Of all the segments in Beyoncé’s visual extravaganza Lemonade, the fiery video for the reggae-tinged track “Hold Up” was by far the most memorable and seemingly the trickiest to film. But for Pär Ekberg, it was just another day on the job. The Swedish cinematographer (who also shot the videos for Bey’s “Superpower” and “Haunted”) sat down with Pitchfork to talk more about his experience on set.

“It’s like a playground for grown-ups, I guess,” said Ekberg. “You get to do all the things, cool explosions, and what have you. It’s a lot of fun. It gives you so many opportunities to create nice images when, first of all, you have an amazing artist who always delivers, and secondly, you have special effects, cool locations and special effects. You can’t really go wrong.”

As for Queen Bey’s underwater stunts, Ekberg found her stamina particularly impressive: “She was amazing. Being in the water for that long, it’s not easy, I can tell you that.”

So how does a shoot of this caliber stay a secret? Ekberg revealed that social media is perhaps the biggest issue that the production crew and management had to deal with.

“Sometimes they ask you to put a sticker on your mobile phone where the camera is when you’re on the set,” he said. “It always makes me laugh a little bit, because I’m the guy that’s putting tons of different cameras on the set, and I have to put a sticker on my phone. If you’re in production or in management, it must be really hard to keep a secret like this. I don’t know how they do it.”

Read the full Pitchfork interview here.

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