Case study of Jamie Thraves

Director Jamie Thraves made short films whilst studying at University. He used award winning short films as a calling card to get his foot in the door with the production company factory films. He first began by filming three music videos that cost around £5000 each. Once leaving University he continued making music videos to the point that they needed to be good for him to survive. He had to become a success in the industry. As the treatment towards his two best videos were sent to production companies, both of them became a success. His main talent was that he made his videos in a way that was unique, his videos were more like mini films rather than generic videos. This is because they contained a story line, rather than a generic band dancing around. One of the main examples of his work is "Just" by Radiohead.

This was filmed and directed by himself in no more than three days. He had a much larger budget than what he is used to, totally at £100,000 for this specific video. The video follows a storyline of Radiohead performing inside a flat. The storyline follows a man that decides to lay down on the floor, who is approached by several people asking him why he is laying down, to which he simply replies "leave me alone" Using Roland Barthes theory of enigma codes we can see that everyone wants to know why the man is lying there. The code keeps the audience interested and makes them eager to know what will happen next regarding the man. This is an example of an "Open text"wherein there are several different meanings that a person can take towards the song. In relation to Goodwin's theory, the lyrics have no meaning towards the storyline in the video, which can cause some confusion in the audiences.

Another of his most popular videos is The Scientist by Coldplay. This video is similar to Just in the sense that the video is similar to a mini film due to the storyline that is used. It is a very different storyline to just though, this music video starts with a man lying on the ground, and then continues the entire way through in reverse. The audience starts off seeing what it is he has been doing as time goes on. We eventually find out that he was driving a car with a girlfriend (assuming) and that he crashed, resulting in her death. We can see from the video that he is walking away from the pain and sorrow that he feels as a result of the death of the girl. Using Goodwin's theory, the lyrics somewhat agree with the visuals.

To conclude, Jamie has an extremely unique style when making videos that most people do not would not opt for. He prefers to tell a story within his work, rather than simply having people dancing around. The way that he uses props and the scene is unique, such as the dark hole in "I will follow you into the dark" and the rewinding in "The scientist" He stated that he prefers using emotion in lyrics, rather than lyrics themselves.