Since the trailer release of Safe House, residents of Cape Town are feeling even more chuffed that they live in Cape Town, however, the producers of Safe House are not the first to shoot in Cape Town. Music videos have been filmed in Cape Town for years.
Whilst in high school, Feeder’s 7 Days video was playing on MTV. It was the first video I had seen that was filmed in Cape Town but I felt that it was a dirty little secret. Cape Town had not reached it’s height of popularity back then and I only recognised my city from living there.
Whilst living in London in 2001, I saw a video that I SWORE was in Cape Town – I’d only caught the end of it. Anyone who’s crawled home from Long Street on a Sunday morning will know how dead quiet town can be. These days it’s busier than ever but when I saw the litter blowing around in the music video, I KNEW it was Cape Town, and I was right. A filmed their ‘Nothing’ video in Cape Town more than a decade ago.
Westlife took a tour to South Africa and featured then Ms South Africa in their ‘When You’re Looking Like That’ video.
My favourite band of all time, Faithless, also seemed to feature Cape Town in their video. The beaches looked familiar but it was not until the closing scene in ‘Bombs’ that I felt I could potentially prove the video was shot in Cape Town.
Last year, (perhaps the year before) I went to go catch an ETC Crew gig at Mercury Live in Cape Town’s city bowl. Travie McCoy from Gym Class Heroes showed up and went on stage with the crew to spit a few beats. It was completely random but lots of fun, most importantly, it ended up in his ‘One At A Time’ video. He was travelling the world to create awareness about HIV/AIDS for an MTV production. P.S Mecury’s wall isn’t even checkered anymore! 
Travie McCoy – One At A Time
Then 2011 saw the exciting performance of Coldplay at the Cape Town stadium. News quickly spread that footage from Cape Town and Johannesburg would be used in the latest video ‘Paradise’. The big elephant on stage gave it all away and the audience was thrilled to be included in the video.
These are 6 videos that I have personally seen featuring Cape Town but I decided to Google ‘Videos shot in Cape Town’ and found 2 other surprising results. Snow Patrol apparently shot their ‘Planets Bend Between Us’ video in Cape Town whilst touring for the Coke Fest and Leona Lewis’ ‘Run’ video was also filmed in the Mother City, but you can’t really tell that it was filmed in Cape Town!
blazin squad- crossroads, Blue- U make me wanna, Ian Van Dahl- Reason, Bon Jovi – These Days, These are some that were also filmed in Cape Town.
Yes! I thought I’d added Blue but didn’t know the others 😀