Nigel Dick on Britney Spears, the Schoolgirl Idea, and a $750,000 Video

The “…Baby One More Time” video has passed a billion YouTube views, but the image that made it iconic didn’t start with director Nigel Dick. His original treatment set Britney Spears in a boxing ring. The label rejected it and told him to ask her.

“The schoolgirl thing was hers,” Dick told Music Week. “At the time I made that video, I was a 40-year-old British guy – I had no idea what was going through the mind of a 16-year-old American girl!”

That detail now sits at the center of the video’s legacy. Dick, who directed four Spears clips, admits he didn’t recognize her ceiling. “I didn’t know Britney was a superstar right away. I just thought, ‘Wow, she’s really good in front of the camera.’” She told him she wanted to be as big as Madonna by 23. He thought, “Yeah, right, good luck with that.”

Their final collaboration, “Oops!… I Did It Again,” cost $750,000—more than Dick says he spent on hundreds of other videos—and survives in part because Spears changed the catsuit choice at the last minute. “History has proven her right to switch it and me wrong,” he said.

Dick’s memoir, Music Video Mischief, is out September 15 via Trouser Press Books.