Overview

• The New York–born filmmaker began with Onyx’s 1992 “Throw Ya Gunz” and went on to direct videos for Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake, the Killers and many others.
• She was behind 2013’s high-profile clips for Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” and Miley Cyrus’s “We Can’t Stop,” and served as creative director for Cyrus’s VMAs performance and Bangerz tour.
• Martel later corroborated Emily Ratajkowski’s account that Thicke behaved inappropriately on the “Blurred Lines” set and said she confronted him at the time.
• Her late-career work included a visiting-filmmaker role at the University of Oregon in 2022 and one of her final videos, Ciara’s “Ecstasy,” released in April 2025.
• Artists and collaborators including Charli XCX, Alex Kapranos and Ciara shared tributes on social media, and her family named her aunt Gail Merrifield Papp and three pet cats among survivors.