Research

Genre video analysis

I want to look at the emo/rock genre as that is what I think I will be doing for my project. The first 2 videos are of the artist I will be doing the music video for.

Story
Opening acting sequence

Titles
Musicians performing with instruments
Dark clothes
Contrast in characters to show outcast
Shows ‘scandalous’ behaviors like affairs mirrored in lyrics

Lots of cuts and mid shots to fit with the pacing of the music which is quite fast and aggressive

Camera is often shaky, out of focus and has an aftereffect that sometimes minimizes the visibility of the screen to replicate the dying man’s vision as he takes his final breathes
A large group of people with gas mask and things linked to death and destruction to set tone and show they’re in a hellish place
On a float with decoration mirroring that of floats used in the day of the dead parades in south American countries and Mexico

Scenery is covered in ash and destruction to reinforce the idea of hell, death and the end of civilization
Nurses and hospital equipment to instantly imply that the man lying down is ill
Wearing marching band style clothing but its all black – I.e. music of the dead, the marching band of death
Dropping of the thin curtains implied as hospital walls represents loosing his grip on life and finally passing over as once those curtains fall he is shown to be in the deathly world the musicians are
Main singer is shot from above like he is being watched over which is mirrored in the lyrics

Dead man is shown to walk the road of death alone
The parade seems to be the only thing alive and the road they’re on is the only one, makes them stand out and this ‘parade’ seems like a unique occurrence potentially showing the idea of making your way spiritually to the other side

Story
Opens up in a dressing room with the musicians and guests
Crowd, flags and instruments are all red symbolizing rebellion and danger
Rebellious acts reinforced by the song’s lyrics
Observational genre shots to create the idea that the bad acts were unprovoked and that this is just how they act
Do bad acts whilst wearing nun costumes to reinforce the bad morals of the characters that they would wear a costume of something symbolizing moral righteousness and innocence whilst shop lifting

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Artist research

All of their songs are about death, depression, suicide being an outsider and general loss

Three cheers for sweet revenge was their first album and the one my song is on

The album has a loose storyline where a man goes to prison for murder after making a deal with the devil and going on a killing spree.

Because of that I want to allude to or show a murder even if it is just him emerging with blood covered hands

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Beautiful by Christina Aguilera analysis

Message – be yourself, don’t let other people’s opinions effect how you express yourself and show love. Magazines promote harmful body images

In a room by themselves – implying they feel alone and vulnerable

Sad and dark tone

Nude people look in the mirror – visual representation of the message and sets up the story theme

She’s wearing fairly heavy makeup and is sat in the corner – hiding her face with makeup and is ‘cornered’ she feels insecure, attacked put in a corner by the people watching her and critiquing her looks

Show ways people are body shamed and different ways people are effected. Men, women, punks, gay couples and transgender people included – raises awareness of all the people effected and how

When the music picks up so does the tone with the people shown doing what makes them more comfortable I.e. kissing and wearing a bra

Girl rips up magazines that promote the harmful body image – implies these types of media are to blame for the body dysmorphia and the problems caused

In the last third they all finally stand up to the mirror they had been avoiding up to that point providing almost a story like climax to the music video and all of their body dysmorphia story arcs – represents how people should stand up for themselves and ‘face themselves in their truest forms’

The end mirrors the beginning in terms of where she’s sitting and the iconography of the flower but, the flower at the end is alive and the one before is dead. The iconography of the ‘resurrected’ flower shows how not listening to others harmful opinions can bring life to someone who has been beaten down by others and metaphorically had the life and vibrancy taken from them.

The director was gay and so that emotional connection to the songs message of inclusion could be the reason why the homophobia is one of the highlighted experiences.

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Run the Jewels – Legend has it analysis

The message of the video is that rappers and people who look like the 2 artists are immediately put in the category of dangerous and criminal. Also that the criminal justice system is prejudiced and used against people who look like the band, this can be seen where at the start the line up has some people that fit their same description but as the video goes on more and more people are introduced that are clearly not the criminal i.e. a young schoolgirl and a nun. Eventually the line up is just them with all police officers and there is even a dialogue line from an officer saying we all know who’s guilty here. This clearly illustrates that the police act upon their prejudices by essentially picking someone and making them the criminal as opposed to arresting someone they could potentially ‘respect’ due to their race or socio-economic standing.

When the audience is meant to be shown along with their chanting halls filled with jail shows are shown instead, the implication of this being that people who listen to them or the rap genre in general are seen as criminals and generalised for their music tastes.

The numbers when the jail cell hall is shown:

1980 – 501,800

1990 – 1,148,700

2000 – 1,937,400

2017 – 2,362,500

Are the statistics of how many black people were incarcerated across the USA in that 10 year period. This again shows that they’re talking about racism in the justice system.

On top of all this it ends with the little schoolgirl being the criminal and getting away with it because the rappers are arrested and profiled as the criminals. Again they’re saying that this attitude and profiling leads to the real criminals getting away.

Artist context

This theme is at the centre of more of their songs like Close your eyes (and count to fuck) which features police brutality against African Americans

After leaving the stage, the crowd began chanting “R.T.J.” repetitiously. The booming chant filled the Midland until El-P and Killer Mike returned to the stage.“Y’all sound like a f—ing prison out here,” El-P said. – Source

El-P was recovering from the demise of his label (money trouble), grief over the death of a dear friend (cancer) and bouts of self-destructiveness (“I was doing a lot of fucking drugs, trying to escape,” he says). Mike was in search of an escape too. He’d suffered demoralizing label headaches over the years – executives overly interested in hits, prolonged release-date purgatories – and came to associate sales with self-worth. He had his own hurtful impulses, which largely took shape as substance abuse and infidelity to his wife – or, as Mike puts it, “depression, drugs and bitches.”

Mike was raised in large part by his grandmother, a nurse, and his grandfather, who once drove trucks for the Chattahoochee Brick Co., “which used prison labor as slave labor during Jim Crow,” Mike notes (his skull is brimming with such history). It was through his grandfather “that I started to understand class versus race; I often had more in common with working-class whites than with the Southern liberals my grandma looked up to, or with the blacks of means who lived over in Collier Heights.” That neighborhood, he elaborates, “was the result of planned gentrification: Democrats actually bought land out from under poor whites in order to bring blacks to the party.”

His father was a cop, his uncle a guy who made money “in the streets,” Mike says, giving him role models on both sides of the law. Mike dealt drugs briefly, and on the Run the Jewels track “Crown,” he raps about the deep regret he still feels for having once sold cocaine to a pregnant woman. “Working with [El-P] makes it safe for me to get out some of the darkest, most tumultuous, guilt-ridden thoughts I have,” he says, welling up at the memory. “I sold cocaine, and there’s days where that shit fucks with me, because I knew, even at that age, how wrong I was. But everybody sold cocaine! Everybody sold and did cocaine!” He begins crying, wiping tears from his cheeks. “That verse just poured out of me – I didn’t give a fuck if it made the album. I gave a fuck that it was finally out of me.” – Source

This song was also used in the film black panther which is a large social commentary on racism and white supremacy which lines up even further with the music videos message

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Test shots edited

All of these clips were filmed on my phone as I felt that the general public would feel very uncomfortable with a large camera being pointed around them

At the very end is a separate clip where I experimented with the editing software and familiarised myself with tracking and zooming in an attempt to make myself more comfortable with premier pro

Things that I want too be different in my actual video

Potentially following him walking into the building instead of birds eye
Fake blood for storyline
Either walking a lot slower or a lot faster to fit the tone
Lip syncing to act as artist performance because that is highly common in the genre

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