The latest episode of Genius' ongoing series Framework, which takes a look at how music videos came together by talking to the directors behind them, is focused on Cardi B's Dubai-set visuals for her smash hit, "Bodak Yellow." The video, which features an amazing shot of Cardi rapping the track next to a chilled out cheetah, didn't come together quite as simply as director Picture Perfect had initially hoped.
"It was my idea, I wrote it into the treatment," he said of the shot with the cheetah. "I just didn't know how hard it was gonna be to get a cheetah out there. We shot this other scene that we didn't use, and he [the cheetah] attacked Cardi in that scene." The footage of the cheetah full-on hissing at Cardi is pretty scary, but the handlers came in to chill out the cheetah pretty quickly, and Cardi wasn't hurt. "That was kinda crazy," he added.
"This cheetah scene was really supposed to be Cardi in, like, an exotic car," he said of the original plan. "We could never get that shot off. We didn't find a guy that was crazy to let us put a cheetah in a passenger seat, and I don't think Cardi would trust that guy." Eventually, they got ahold of a second cheetah, and they were able to get a shot of Cardi petting it in the final version of the video. Apparently, the second one was calm because it had just ate "about six pounds of deer meat."
Picture Perfect also talked about the incredible shot of Cardi on a camel with high-heels, explaining, "She's a trooper, man. If it's for her video and her shot, she's gonna do it."
Revisit the music video for "Bodak Yellow" below.
