Blog post 10 - Jamie Thraves - Case Study 1

Jamie Thraves is another prestigious director who has directed many music videos for different artists both group and individual as well as some major and some on a less major scale. He started off his career through making short films at University and when one of these films was highlighted for its quality, he exploited its award winning status by placing a foot in the door in the industry through the production company factory films. After this, Thraves was given the tools to create  3 very low budget music videos which cost about £5000 each.

As known in the music video industry it is very much a dog eat dog world. This means that each job is paid on commission and the stakes are very high in relation to what directors need to do to get jobs. Thraves submitted two treatments for his most well known music videos.

Radiohead - Just

This was Thrave's first music video which was capped at the budget of only £100,000 which is minute in comparison to large scale music video projects. This meant that Thraves had to consider what he could and could not do keeping in mind his restricting budget. To further this, Thraves only had three days to complete the music video which meant that work was excessive and intensely full on.



This video shows Jamie Thraves creative talents and his unique style of music videos. It is an oddity and Jamie has done an excellent job in portraying the abstract nature of the video. The features of the video conform to Goodwin's theory of performance within and stage performance specifically in a rock or metal video. There is no sign of Mulvey's theory of the male gaze and this brings up the idea that sexualised depictions of women by the media are more prominent in specific genres.

 



Japanese Popstars - Song for Lisa

This was Thrave's 2nd music video and had a budget of £20,000 and was also shot in three days. Jamie has used music videos to break into film and has created three feature films.



Thrave's argues that there is importance in using the lyrics but not being too literal with the content of the video. He argues that the most important thing is to go with the emotion of the lyrics.