GREATEST: BRTHR
Travis Scott and The Weeknd’s go-to directing duo on the importance of an artist’s visual identity in the Internet Age.
The Golden Age of Music Videos was nothing short of a landmark moment in the music industry. Label executives boosted sales through a lucrative marketing tool that captivated audiences, while artists were afforded a new method of creatively expressing themselves and connecting with fans. But gone are the days of feature-film budgets, record sales as a primary source of revenue and televised broadcasts. In a time where song streaming and endless-scroll content feeds dominate shrinking attention spans, directing duo BRTHR is preserving the cinematic experience of short-form filmmaking.
Alex Lee and Kyle Wightman first met as film students at New York’s School of Visual Arts. Unchallenged by the program’s curriculum, the two dropped out after their second year in 2010 to cut their teeth in the field. Today, the duo count The Weeknd, Travis Scott, Lana Del Rey, Selena Gomez and Kali Uchis among their collaborators.
BRTHR’s trademark visual style is instantly recognizable and frequently imitated in today’s pool of rising music-video auteurs: cotton candy-hued lighting, rapid-fire jump cuts, swirling camera movements, lo-fi glitches. The pair’s fluency in After Effects and penchant for grandiose mise en scène are a testament to their Internet-Age understanding of what stimulates a viewer’s retina for more than just a few seconds.
Wrapping a commercial production in Ukraine—which the two weren’t at liberty to disclose but will be one of their most ambitious projects to date—BRTHR discusses the role of music videos in today’s content landscape and how a strong visual identity can take an artist from internet sensation to global superstar.