VIDEOS
VIDEO VILLAGE
Art Means Business pairs Spokane musicians with filmmakers to create music videos with a local focus BY NATHAN WEINBENDER
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ast summer, Olivia Brownlee shot a two-and-a-halfminute music video at the Rockin’ B Ranch, the rural Liberty Lake spot that serves as a year-round wedding venue and plays host to Wild West-themed dinner shows. In the clip, Brownlee performs a twangy, gleefully law-skirting ditty called “Don’t Tell the County,” while her mom and dad, the owners of the Rockin’ B, do-si-do around the barn. The video serves two purposes, Brownlee says: It’s a way to share the song, of course, but it’s also an advertisement for the ranch itself, which has been closed since March due to COVID-19 restrictions. It was around this time that Brownlee had her lightbulb moment: “Why shouldn’t it be that artists support businesses?” she tells the Inlander. So Brownlee approached the nonprofit organization Spokane Arts and received a grant through the Spokane County CARES Act, and the result is a project called Art Means Business. It paired local musicians with local
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Liberty Lake musician Olivia Brownlee. filmmakers, and tasked the teams with shooting music videos at local businesses of the artists’ choice. It’s similar to a previous Spokane Arts endeavor called Music Video Jams, though with an extra focus on Spokane’s economy. “The No. 1 priority of creating these videos was to support the local businesses in question, to promote them and kind of tell their story and give people some insight into local businesses that maybe they otherwise wouldn’t be familiar with,” says Spokane Arts Executive Director Melissa Huggins. “It also felt like a really great way to be able to put some artists to work, to be able to give filmmakers and musicians a project … and feel like they were doing something to support the broader community.” Art Means Business has thus far produced four music videos — rock quartet Buffalo Jones at the Big Dipper (directed by Michael Notar), harpist Kathlyn Kinney at the Spokane Boxing Gym (directed by Darrien Mack), and rapper Ayre at the Rain and Scratch restaurants (directed
YOUNG KWAK PHOTO
by Misty Grace Shipman). Brownlee chose to center her video on the Northwest Mediation Center, where she has participated in classes. The clip, directed by Miguel Malton Gonzales, features the song “No Man’s Land.”
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ocal filmmaker Juan Mas has worked on a few small sets since COVID-19 protocols became standard, and he was brought on as a producer of Art Means Business to ensure the video shoots moved smoothly and met the proper safety standards. The pandemic has changed the way film sets run: Crews must be pared down to the most essential roles, and on-screen performers still need to keep a distance of six feet. “You have to think outside the box and be even more creative,” Mas says. “How are you going to tell that story without just using your standard coverage tricks?” “It was constricting in some ways,” Brownlee says of
