Jamie Thraves British Film Writer and Director

Jamie Thraves began making early short experimental films in 1989 at Hull university. He has won awards for his experimental films as he was involved with the company Factory Films. He began by shooting three very low budget music videos. After accomplishing fame Jamie made his success from the band Radiohead with their song Just. Jamie became successful by taking lyrics out of a song, but not presenting them all in his videos which gave a unique theme to the video.
Jamie's recent video in July cost about £20,000 and had the shooting time of 2 days. He has used the music videos 'Just' by Radiohead and 'The Scientist' by Coldplay to achieve being a director. Jamie's tips to his own success in music and directing are to use lyrics but not be to literal, and to go with the emotion of the lyrics. Now he has three featured films which are
- The Low Down
- The Cry of the Owl
- Treacle Jr


Radiohead's song 'Just' with the help of Thraves became very popular with lots of attention for its strong narrative structure and use of subtitles. The video featuring a man lying down on the pavement and is confronted by an angry crowd. What the man says at the end of song is used purposely to make the audience think of what he could of said and is a cliff hanger. The strange use of people lying down on the pavement attracts viewers with its quirky technique. There is a good use of instrumental work and uniqueness. Radiohead's video had a budget of £100,000 and had to be completed in three days.

Jamie Thraves helped make the music video for 'Coldplay's' song 'The Scientist. The video won three moon men awards in 2003 at the VMA awards including best direction and best breakthrough video. It has a budget of £200,000 and had a limited time of three days to be shot. The video attracted its audience by the technique of going backwards through the video, this would have been hard to achieve and needed talent as the singer had to mime the words whilst walking backwards which is cleverly achieved. The words 'back to the start' symbolize the desire to go back to the beginning as we later see at the end of video that the actor is upset as he and his loved one were in a car crash reflective of the beginning of the story, and he wants to go back to a time when this never happened. The video is successful because it portrays a potentially real life story where we can feel emotion.