Meeting The Director: Jake Wynne

On Friday 24th June Jake Wynne, a British Director, visited our Media class to talk about getting into the music industry and his own experience of that while also advising us on our music videos next year. As the director of our practice music video, 5ive's 'Everybody Get Up', it was also important to meet him and for him to introduce us to the way he directs and what he was to expect of us.

Throughout his talk, Jake gave an incredibly insightful look into the industry, in particular the direction and work surrounding music videos. He told us about the need for a particular amount of beauty shots within a music video and we were able to understand the science behind the shot. He explained the uses of a music video, not only used as a visual aid to an artist's song, but also as a promotion of both the artist's music and image.

Analyse a Music Video

Top 10


1 - Instant impact!
Close up of her face, when the vocals start her eyes flick up to face the viewer.

Striking costume – red hair with gold headband and blue dress.

Her hair contrasts to her dancers – 2 have dark hair 2 have blonde – her in middle with bright red hair

2 - Non-linear editing

Cuts between her on floor in black dress head close to camera arms outstretched – very striking setup, her focal point - her in group in blue robe/dress dancing with other dancers as a group, same costumes used twice – one with her dancing/singing on her own then in a group. Quick fast paced editing between the shots 

Different costumes in each scenario

3 - Repetitions
 only a few setups used throughout the video and many close ups of her face in individual scenarios whereas as a group there tends to be wider shots used zooming in and out ... repeated use of costumes in different setups.

Repetitive use of same shots and setups but another setup in a passage is introduced in the middle where Florence gets quite a few close-ups/ beauty shots/ individual screen time before it goes back to using more group-dancing again.
4 - Strong sense of artist identity
introduces her musical sound and the title highlights her style

Her hair is used as a definitive feature of her image and is complimented and accentuated throughout the video

The dance style coheres with her music and the feel of the video gives a taste of her music

No separate narrative that draws attention away from her and her performance throughout the piece – solely focused on her

5 - A Performance

there is a lot of dancing within the video, with her on her own and then her with other dancers. There isn’t a particular narrative within the video, it follows her singing in different locations to the camera while dancing, so the whole video is a performance by her to the viewer which is much more intimate and draws them into her more personally than a separate narrative would have done.
her movements throughout also highlighted worship – hands held in prayer – dancing as a group – pagan influence shown

6 - Visual Pleasures

 Colour of outfits and presentation of them very bold and quite pagan/ spiritual

The space used was an empty church I believe, and the space was taken advantage of with the wide open rooms and archways shown, highlighting the beautiful architecture

Very spiritual feel to video created through the visuals

7 - Wow Factor!

The outfits and space used were very important in giving the video its wow factor as it relied heavily on the performance and space as they only used one building and different parts of it so had to make each setup look individual and interesting in its own right

Her presentation of herself as a sort of priestess was visually exciting and beautiful, and the serene sort of connotations of prayer were juxtaposed with the heaver use of drums in the music that increasingly made the video more ritualistic and animalistic in its nature which keeps the viewer interested as there is a hint of a lack of control that manifests itself through the music and visuals collaborated together  

8 - Provoke a reaction

The video provokes a reaction in the sense that her music and her other videos are all heavily influenced by paganism and ritual, and this seems to be quite uncommonly used in many artist’s videos, so makes hers unique. The stereotypes and connotations around these kind of ideas would also help develop her image as an artist and person, and people’s attitudes to her would be influenced by the video in a way that the music on its own may not have done.

9 - Works on different levels

The video works on different levels by giving the viewer an opportunity to distance themselves from their everyday lives and be transported into this quite surreal world created in this otherwise empty cathedral-like building.

10 - Pop Culture

I think the religious symbolism is common imagery within many modern mediums, and is being utilised by many artists. For example Lady Gaga is also branching into religious iconography and lyrical content and an expression of faith is becoming increasingly popular at the moment.