To get a better understanding of my audience and the reason why there needs to be a Black Lives Matter movement, I recorded a lot of documentaries and news reports on the situation. These gave me a true understanding of how shocking everything is and showed me that I need to convey a great deal of emotion in my music video to truly capture the devastating effects of it.
I watched 'Hip Hop World News' which has helped me to understand my target audience more and also to understand where this hate for the police has come from in the black community and how music has helped so much as an outlet of this anger.
The documentary included various songs about police brutality such as Sound of da Police by KRS-ONE and F*ck The Police by N.W.A
The documentary also showed the moments before Eric Garner died from asphyxiation and the moments after Philando Castile was shot. Although these videos are incredibly distressing, it's imperative that people get an insight into what racism can result in and why it must stop.
Videos from a Black Lives Matter Rally have helped me to understand my audience better and see their responses to the matter. This will help me to give a sense of simulacra of the rally in my music video
Rubble Kings - BBC Four - Broadcasted on 30/09/2016
'Rubble Kings' was a 1 hour documentary featured in the 'Hip Hop Stories' series on BBC Four.
It gives us an insight into gangs and violence in New York in the 1960's and 70's, with interviews with ex gang leaders and influential people in that era. It shows how hip-hop had an influence on the gang culture and actually helped to end it. Fast forwarding to 2017, I think hip-hop is still having an influence on youths, but instead of helping to end gang violence, I think it helps to end the worry about police brutality, gun violence and racism towards black people. I myself find solace in the lyrics and music videos of current and old hip-hop songs and believe that hip-hop music and music videos have had such a strong, positive effect on it's audience throughout many years. This research has further confirmed my beliefs but I'm also going to research further to see if this is the case with other people.
To get a better understanding of my target audience, I decided to create a survey. This won't be my only audience research but I feel as though it'll help me to completely understand my audience and aid me in creating my music video to fit with typical codes and conventions. As much as I enjoy watching Hip-Hop music videos, I can't make my music video based purely on my wants and needs, this is for the fans of Hip-Hop music and this survey will get the answers to the questions I need to know.
I posted a link to the survey on Facebook, twitter and snapchat, and also messaged friends and family to see if they would fill it out
I asked people's gender, age and race so that I could whittle my feedback down as I'm looking to target people between the age of 16 and 25. This is a wide enough target audience to target a lot of people, but small enough to make sure I'm giving them what they want.
I then asked if they listen to Hip-Hop music as that's the genre of music I'm going to be doing, just so I could whittle down my results further.
If they said 'yes' to listening to Hip-Hop music, I then asked them if they watch music videos, how they watch the music videos, why they watch the music videos and what they like to see in them.
Growing up as a mixed race girl, music has been an incredibly important part of my life. My dad knows first hand how hard it is to deal with racism and wanted to make sure from a young age that I knew my worth and didn't take much notice of people who thought otherwise. He did this through music with positive representations of black people and black culture. I want to connect with my black side with this music video and also show other people their worth with my music video by doing a music video based around racism, black people and their worth.
I have looked at various songs after doing some research
This song has no copyright that I'm aware of (it has been uploaded by someone other than the official Jaheim account and has been up on YouTube for 7 years so I can assume it's okay, but if I pick this song I'll run my own tests to make sure it doesn't get taken down) It's all about being fabulous as you are with lyrics such as
"Was just us and mom, single family home, She did the best she could, did it all alone, Met a man but he won't raise a child thats not his own, Oh, no, oh, no, no" Prepaid CELLIES for local calls little dons and divas up at the mall rockin cornrow twists, thats how we BALL
But don't hate on us, were fabulous
We're all that we've got and no matter whatever together we'll weather the storm
IT AIN'T A LOT, we all we got, it might get rough, but it's alright
Cause U-N-I-T-Y is all we need To get our R-E-S-P-E-C-T And never G-I-V-E U-P And keep your H-E-A-D U-P And never G-I-V-E U-P And keep your H-E-A-D U-P And never G-I-V-E U-P And keep your H-E-A-D U-P And never G-I-V-E U-P And keep your H-E-A-D U-P And never G-I-V-E U-P And keep your H-E-A-D U-P And never G-I-V-E U-P And keep your H-E-A-D U-P
This song talks about black women usually ending up as single parents raising a family on her own and how incredible they are for doing that.
Cornrow twists are a type of hairstyle black girls tend to wear but this song is saying "don't hate on us, we're fabulous" "we're all we've got but we'll get through this all together" This is the first song I remember thinking "yes, I am fabulous being me"
For this song, I'd need to cast some children as there are children singing in the song which could be risky as children aren't always reliable for doing what you need them to do.
Copyright however, isn't a problem.
Song: Canal St.
Artist: A$AP Rocky ft. Bones
Genre: Hip-hop/ Rap
Canal St. talks about life being a struggle when you're black, having to hustle and try to work your way up to the top when all the odds seem to be against you. Canal St is the home of 'Popular Jewellery' where A$AP Rocky bought his chains and jewellery for the music video, this jewellery would've been very expensive so this is a milestone for him and his journey, knowing that he made it enough to buy from expensive jewellery stores.
Copyright isn't an issue with this song as lots of people have uploaded this song. It's not one of his newest songs and there isn't an official music video to it meaning I can easily interpret it any way I see fit without being distracted by a pre-existing one.
Another possible song choice is PohLease by KAMAU, this music video is completely about police brutality and focusses more on those events than empowering black people, but the way KAMAU words things such as "Killing cubs just because, Colour is a credible cause To make that bird caw, Incredible cost to a mother to To get that cursed call" shows the struggle people are going through just because of the colour of their skin, so if I pick this song I will record an empowering, emotive music video.
There's no copyright on this song as KAMAU is a fairly new artist. I have also messaged his instagram account out of courtesy to ask for permission to use the song and he said yes.
Scarface is definitely up for interpretation, but with references to villain 'Lex Luthor' and lyrics such as 'The government will not be killing me' followed by the sound of a gunshot, I see this as reference to police brutality. The song is slightly shorter than other songs, but it seems to work well.
The above video is a fan made video mixed with original clips from Jaden Smith's music video. This shows that copyright will not be an issue as other people have uploaded the song.
This song is a tribute from 2Pac to his mum who raised her on his own, again, something that stereotypically happens to a lot of black mothers. It also touches on the point that young black men can get into trouble with the police which also means that police brutality is a subject I could explore with the music video. I could do this song through the eyes of women and the pain they go through when they lose the fathers of their children, and then possibly their children because of police brutality.
Copyright could be an issue with this song, but there are lots of videos up on YouTube uploaded by various accounts of lyric videos and copies that haven't been taken down so this could be ok to use.
This is another song about strong black single women raising children on their own, and how thankful the children are. My parents split up when I was young and my Mum raised me on her own so I have a personal connection to this song and feel I could show emotion through my direction and filming.
Unfortunately, as Kanye West is such a big star, copyright could be an issue, however, someone uploaded this song in 2008 and it hasn't been taken down so this seems okay to use.
This music video quite clearly breaks codes and conventions because we see Beyonce dressed up as a man. In this music video, for Upgrade U ft Jay-Z, Beyonce is seen dressed up as Jay-Z, lip synching to some of Jay-Z's part of the song. Later on, Jay-Z comes in as himself and raps the rest of his part of the song. This is really interesting as normally we only see the main star in the music video lip synching to their part in the song. As Andrew Goodwin said "There is a demand on the part of the record company for lots of close-ups of the main artist/ vocalist" If we don't see the main artist we tend to see someone of the same gender lip synching, so to see someone of the opposite gender lip synching to a voice that doesn't match up is rare but really interesting.
And quite ironically, Beyonce and Jay-Z sampled Betty Wright's 'Girls Can't Do What The Guys Do' yet Beyonce is doing exactly what the guy in the video does, dressed as him.
Song: The Devil's in the Temple
Artist: Bon Jovi
Genre: Rock
Bon Jovi's music video is incredibly clever. It could be - in my opinion, 'wrongfully' interpretted that Frank and Ivanna Borin directed the video to mock young female artists and 'pop' songs (partly because of the Ariana Grande 'side to side' intertextuality) But after researching, I've discovered that they were actually challenging stereotypes, codes and conventions, more specifically the way that young female artists are treated badly in the music industry.
The woman in this video is lip synching to a male voice singing which breaks traditional conventions of a music video of any genre.
The directors have clearly put a lot of thought into using Laura Mulvey's male gaze theory in the music video to challenge the way women are treated. Not only are we as the audience placed into the perspective of a heterosexual man watching this young woman in little clothing, we can also see her being watched by powerful male directors and being overly sexualised by them as they closely watch every move she makes. They then stop her and say "you have to be more sexy, more pop, move your ass like this."
The sub-genre of my music video is racism which includes the Black Lives Matter movement and police brutality. I have researched music videos based on this matter to further develop my understanding.
'Alright' is in my opinion an incredible music video and is one of my favourites. The whole concept of the music video is that there are a lot of bad things happening all over the world, but Kendrick and his music can help to heal and make things better or at least easier to cope with.
This is shown by Kendrick, the protagonist who is seen flying through the sky like superman, acting as a superhero to anyone affected by what's going on in the world, showing people that it's going to be 'Alright' where there is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals (Goodwin)
The whole music video is shot in black and white which I think is very effective in creating a powerful, emotive short story.
This is a 6:54 music video which includes a prelude. At the beginning of the video, before the music starts, there are clips setting the scene, showing the neighbourhood with skid marks on the road - suggesting there have been car races in the neighbourhood. There are also clips of buildings, graffiti, a black male lying on the floor, helicopters, police, a car up in flames, and things being smashes which all foreshadow a music video about violence and gangs and all the bad things happening in the neighbourhood which are things stereotypically seen in an R&B/ Hip-Hop music video (Goodwin)
We see a gun being fired and then a close up of Kendrick Lamar in a car with his friends listening to music, the camera zooms out and we see that they are actually being carried by four white police officers, this is ironic because white police officers have killed a lot of black people and haven't 'carried them' at all.
We then see Kendrick flying through the sky acting like super hero along with lots of different shots of different locations, suggesting that he's flying in all of these locations. The clips of Kendrick flying have obviously been filmed in a green screen room and then edited into the clips in post-production. The music video is a bit of a special effects extravaganza with Kendrick Lamar flying through the sky (Gow) and is also a performance narrative which helps us to understand that the song is about racism and police brutality. (Lynch)
We also see people in these different locations looking up at Kendrick Lamar smiling to show that him and his music have influenced people.
The ending of the music video is quite controversial because the protagonist that has repeatedly been singing "we 'gon be alright", gets shot. Whilst Kendrick is stood on top of a street light, a white police officer arrives in a police car and pulls out an incredibly big gun, but 'shoots' Kendrick with his fingers whilst mouthing 'POW'. We hear a shot, and see a bullet penetrate Kendrick who's still stood on top of the street light. He falls in slow motion whilst repeating the lyrics from the start of the song. He then hits the floor and the audience thinks he's dead, but he opens his eyes and smiles, letting the audience know that he's alright which plays on the lyrics "we 'gon be alright"
The overall music video and the lyrics "and we hate po-po, wanna kill us down in the streets for sure" clearly address racism in a unique and expressive way, whilst also being positive about the situation showing that if we all unite and come together, we're going to be alright.
Blue Lights - Jorja Smith
Genre - Contemporary R&B
The first thing we see in this music video is young children drawing a chalk outline of a body which is a very striking first image. It sets the scene for the music video and shows us that the music video is about police brutality and racism. We also see extreme close ups of Jorja Smith singing, and of her mixed race features which combine her white and black roots. This music video is clearly a performance/ narrative piece.
There is a direct relationship between the lyrics and the visuals (Goodwin). When we hear the lyrics "Don't you run when you hear the sirens coming" we see someone running and we also see strobe lights throughout the music video which links to the lyrics "I wanna turn those blue lights into strobe lights"
All of the clips are quite short and blend into eachother very well, something that would have been edited in post-production. These short snappy clips contrast strongly with the mellow music and highlight how quickly it can all change and your life can be taken by the police with a single gunshot.
This music video breaks some codes and conventions of Contemporary R&B because it's all shot in such a dark light, with strobe lights which are traditionally seen in rave music videos.
Song: Formation
Artist: Beyonce
Genre: Bounce/ Southern Hip-Hop
(Bounce music is an energetic style of New Orleans Hip-Hop music which is said to have originated in the 1980's
Beyonce used her status to not only discuss issues in America, but to thoroughly explore them.
The music video release was perfectly timed during Black History Month, and it explores issues of Police Brutality, unrealistic beauty standards for the black community and many many other issues affecting ethnic minorities.
Black culture is a beautiful thing, yet we are repeatedly being murdered on our streets by people in power, racially targeted, abused and mistreated, constantly having to remind the world that yes, all lives do matter, but 'all lives' include black lives too.
In a world where myself, as a young girl, experienced racial abuse for my big lips and black features, I now watch these features and characteristics made into a 'trend', these features and characteristics are now culturally appropriated by an ethnic majority. It's now considered sexy and beautiful to have big lips and black features and people go to drastic lengths to achieve this look, so it is beautifully refreshing to see Beyonce in this music video with her natural big lips and naturally black features, unapologetically making her statement and taking a stand.
There are lots of references to police brutality in the music video such as Beyonce on the New Orleans police car in the middle of the New Orleans devastations, and a young boy cycling in his neighbourhood with a police car flashing it's lights. The boy remains cycling on the road as if the police car doesn't surprise or shock him which suggests that this is a regular occurrence in his neighbourhood
There are also references to black culture such as the three young girls (including Beyonce's daughter Blue Ivy Carter) dancing together with their natural black hair, and then the three older women in a hair shop all wearing weave or wigs. I interpret this to be symbolising the unrealistic Eastern European beauty standards that black women face, with the three older girls feeling as though they have to wear wigs to appear more 'white' and to hide the beautiful 'black' hair that the three young girls are embracing as they are too little to know about the unrealistic beauty standards they'll face when they grow up
One of my favourite parts of this music video is the young boy break dancing in front of the police officers stood in a line. Usually, you'd see police officers in a line during a riot, but seeing the young boy dancing, and then the officers putting their hands up is a beautiful thing as it shows solidarity, but it also has a deeper meaning and references the 'Hands Up, Don't Shoot' movement as a lot of black people have died due to police brutality whilst having their hands up in the air to show that they don't have a weapon and are complying, but still get shot because they are black.
I think the subtlety of this is absolutely beautiful and shows that all we want is solidarity and to be equal.
The other reference is to the killing of Trayvon Martin aged 17 who was walking back home after buying some skittles. He was seen by a member of neighbourhood watch who we assume racially profiled him, and shot him dead after an altercation. Trayvon Martin was unarmed, only holding some skittles and a bottle of iced tea, and his killer had a gun. The only thing he did wrong apparently was go out wearing a dark coloured hoodie.
Towards the end of the music video, we see some graffiti on a wall which reads 'stop shooting us' and then Beyonce on the police car which is sinking. This brings the audience back to remembering that this is a real issue, and although we want the solidarity as seen above, we don't have it right now.
Downtown is a modern day tribute to early hip-hop following the codes and conventions of the genre (Goodwin) whilst also following Macklemore's iconography of a humorous music video with an early 80's vibe too.
Typical conventions featured in this video are: shots of buildings, performance/narrative style (Lynch), graffiti, a big 'crew' or following, rapping whilst walking and or dancing with the camera tracking, cars etc (Gow song and dance number).
The video was shot in Spokane, Washington which was perfect as the downtown business district is packed full of buildings which are so commonly seen in hip-hop/ rap music videos. The location perfectly represents the hip-hop culture.
The dancing in the music video has elements of soul and funk but works with the style of music.
The video features topless men and skinny women (Goodwin - voyeurism) provocatively licking lollipops which coincides with the hegemonic heterosexual ideologies and also the male gaze (Laura Mulvey) which is true to hip-hop and rap music videos
The camera tracks Macklemore as he rides his moped throughout downtown Washington and also while he's walking with his crew, something that occurs in a lot of hip-hop videos because hip-hop and rap is all about a big community and crew, so having the main singer surrounded by lots of people shows this off perfectly.
There's a lot of intertextuality in this music video (Goodwin) from West Side Story, tributes to old school hip-hop and Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars' Uptown Funk feature in this music video, there's even cameos from famous old school rappers Melle Mel, Grandmaster Caz and Kool Moe Dee.
Something to make note of is the fact that there is a massive contrast in hip-hop music videos in terms of money and flashing cash. Like this video, a lot of hip-hop/ rap music videos are of rappers who have made it, who have the means and money to make big music videos about how well they're doing, but in America, 'downtown' often refers to urban areas with gun-crime, gangs and poor families who can only dream of buying 'mopeds' for the hell of it as Macklemore does to easily in his video. I think there are definitely some big similarities between Downtown's music video and other hip-hop music videos but I think this one misses the point of in my opinion, 'real' hip hop which raps about problems with raw emotion, rappers who have actually lived and experienced the true 'downtown' - flaws and all.
Hip-Hop is a music genre that has developed throughout the years.
More typically this is a genre produced by black people, when this genre first came about there was a lot of oppression and music was a way to fight the oppression, but artists such as Macklemore and many more appreciated the music and decided to create music of this genre too.
Song: Dead Body
Artist: Little Simz
Genre: Hip-Hop
Dead Body is emotive, raw and unique. The song is very personal and discusses Little Simz's life, and this is reflected in the music video. It combines performance, narrative and conceptual and it is unlike anything I have ever seen before.
Joan Lynch (1984) discussed the theory that music videos generally come under 3 main categories, performance, conceptual and narrative. As time has gone on, and we've come into a post-modern world, these categories have become more hybrid and are more often mixed with eachother.
Little Simz has taken advantage of this in her music video and it works beautifully. The left photo above is an example of the 'performance' category with Little Simz rapping to the song, the middle is an example of conceptual, where the editing takes over and captures the eye, and the right is an example of the narrative where we see a dead body as that's what the song is titled and about.
It is shot entirely in black and white which adds to the emotion in the song, but the use of contrast is absolutely breathtaking and creates the very raw feel.
The use of widescreen bars is also very effective and creates a cinematic feel without taking away from the fact it's a music video.
The music video is beautifully morbid. We see a dead body, a body bag, and a dead bird, yet it's not done in a gory way, it's incredibly artistic which can be seen below
