Household name opens up about directing new music video

Torquay-based poet, songwriter, storyteller and dreamer, Camille Barr, better known by her stage name The Last Folk Singer, has teamed up with Nicky Buckley to create a new music video which focuses on gender equality.

The music video, Because I Was Born A Girl, starts with a young girl and boy on a race track on an equal footing, but slowly and surely the young girl is held back as she is given notes with chores, criticisms and disparaging remarks. With each note, the girl takes a step back from where she had started.

The music video was made by a predominantly female production team led by first-time director, former television presenter Nicky.

When the Surf Coast local received an email about the project asking if she would be interested in coming on board she thought it sounded interesting but was also a little surprised.

“I looked at it and said that looks really interesting but I’m not sure why you thought of me as a director,” Nicky said.

But after catching up with Camille and processing it, she thought that she could do it after all.

“Really with the type of work that I’ve done for 30 years, I’ve self-directed myself, I’m always jumping behind the camera and seeing how things look and offering suggestions and changing things so I took it as a challenge.

“So I thought let’s just run with it and see how we go,” Nicky said.

The music video which was shot in Geelong and the Surf Coast was released on International Women’s Day earlier this month.

Camille said she wanted to steer away from the narrative of men against women and focus on cultural indoctrination.

“It’s a cultural issue, change is challenging for both men and women,” she said.

Camille said it can be confronting to realise that we are all part of it and all need to make changes.

Nicky said that for every song there are different interpretations but this song resonated with her after growing up in a household with four brothers.

“For me it was a line in the first note the young girl hands out in the video ‘sweetheart can you hang out the washing?’”

Nicky said she would often do the chores while the boys were out kicking the footy.

“With mum not even knowing what she was doing she was making me do all these jobs like helping with the folding, the cooking, the cleaning.”

Nicky also knows first-hand the difficulties gender inequality causes in the workplace – when she wore an evening dress while pregnant in the nineties, countless bottles of ink were spilt critiquing her decision.

“People were up in arms… now women work right up like I did, people don’t look at it like it’s wrong, it’s normal.”

“I think there are big changes coming all the time and it’s about keeping it going, keep taking one step forward towards equality so it becomes normal for future generations.”

Watch ‘Because I Was Born A Girl’ at thelastfolksinger.com