Evaluation Question One

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The use of branding and affiliation is very key in hip-hop music videos. In all of hip-hop branding is probably one of the most fundamental things as it sets the artists trend and image. For example, the image to the left shows one of the artists from a hip-hop group called 'Rae Sremmurd' is wearing a t-shirt that has the groups logo on it. The reason I chose this as an example is because the screenshot I used is from a music video that was their debut song. As they grew a bigger audience their logo and image became more individual and recognisable. This example shows how important branding and affiliation is in hip-hop music videos. I have demonstrated this in my hip-hop music video; the logo used in the music video is a brand of skateboarding clothing, which is affiliated with the artists. 

The mise-en-scene that I used swell was urbanised which is a direct link to the genre and sub-gene of music that my artist performs in,especially how some of the scenes have symbols and signs which may add meaning to the song (as seen in the right image above). The lighting that I have used also is quiet effect. I decided to use low-key lighting in order to focus the view on the artist but to also add mystery to the rise-en-scene.

The body language of the artist has an effect on the song depending what the song is about, but typically, as hip-hop is a genre of mainly 'hype' music, body language is key in emphasising the lyrical content of the song as seen in the example on the left and in my own hip-hop music video on the right. Most of the time the actions used allow the viewer to notice certain lyrics more which makes the song more memorable. I have clearly demonstrated this in my own piece. However, with this being said, it is not easily done. In the test shots which are on this blog, the body language is very subtle, which was analysed and improved in our actual filming. As the director and filmed of the music video, it is my duty to make sure the artist understands what type of action and body language they should have.