Case Study 1

How Are Music Videos Made?

Case Study 1 - Jamie Thraves

- Made short films at university.
- Began shooting three very low budget music videos which cost about £5,000 each.
- Used an award winning short film as a "calling card" to get a "foot in the door" with the video production company Factory Films.

This is how the process of music video making works:
- A commission from a record label sends a track to 5-10 directors.
- The directors then each submit their treatment. At this stage, it is unpaid.
- The director who has submitted the "best" treatment is then committed to make the video.
- Only then is the director paid.

Radiohead - "Just"
This video was directed by Jamie Thraves and really kickstarted his career. It was shot in 3 days with a £100,000 budget. It is a disjunctive music video because the lyrics do not match the story told in the video.
The video shows Radiohead performing in some sort of apartment alongside a road where a man lies down and a crowd of people surround him asking him why he is lying down. Eventually he tells them why, but the audience to this day still do not know what he said.





Coldplay - "The Scientist"
This video directed by Jamie Thraves was also shot in 3 days, on a higher budget than "Just", it cost £200,000. Thraves looked over the lyrics of the song and the one line "go back to the start" really stood out to him and he decided to use that as the main narrative. He shot the whole video in the point of view of Chris Martin and whilst he's singing forwards, the video goes backwards.