evaluation A2 question 1

My video is an interpretation of the Rizzle Kicks song Miss Cigarette, this is a hip hop/rap genre. Throughout my video there are mainly challenges of the genre stereotypes, which have more links to British hip hop/rap artists than American.
One way which I have used conventions of the hip/hop/rap genre is through the cinematography, in this genre it is stereotypical for close-ups to be used on the main artist, which has links to the development and retaining a star persona. In my video during the lip synching sections the artist played by Michael Godfrey is always show through close-ups which conforms to the genre. However the use of star persona is subverted within my video. With links to mise en scene and costume he is not shot in ways that promote him as a star, for example the lighting is low key and he is not always centred in the shots, with reference to the rule of thirds. This subverts generic conventions where the artist is usually promoted as a star within the video; this is particularly true of American hip hop/rap videos.
The video follows generic conventions by having a female performer but the way she is represented subverts the generic conventions of how women are represented and used in the hip hop/rap genre. The performer, Rachel Watkeys Dowie, defies conventions through her androgynous costume, her female form is not emphasised, which is generally how women are portrayed in hip hop/rap videos. An example of the conventional way the female form is exploited can be seen in Snoop Dog’s video ‘Sweat’.

This was a conscious decision to challenge the way women are often objectified in this type of video. Nicky Minaj defies being objectified in a very different way, one of the ways she defies the objectification linked to the male gaze is the way she uses costume to parody the version of the female form usually found in hip hop/rap videos. Whereas my video develops the idea of refusing to allow the female performer to be objectified through her costume and make up in a different way to Nicky Minaj.
The locations in my video could be considered urban and gritty which conforms more to British hip hop/rap videos such as Professor Green and Plan B.

These could be described as more working class, with links to realism, often reflecting the lives of their audience It goes against the more generic hip hop/rap videos where use locations that have connotations of wealth and success, often portraying a fantasy world which is mainly unobtainable for the audience, offering a sense of escapism.
A convention that has been used and subverted is the type of music video, the three types being conceptual, performance and narrative. My video incorporates all these types, in generic hip hop/rap music videos performance is more often used, sometimes with a element of conceptual. An example of the latter is in Chris Brown’s video ‘I can transform ya’ where he transform from a car into a person

, this links into the idea of intertextual references to popular media, in this case the ‘Transformer’ films. My video conforms to this as I have used popular media; the split screen in my music video is an intertextual reference from the film ‘500 Days of Summer’.

However looking at British hip hop/rap videos many combine the three music video types. Plan B exemplifies this in his video ‘End Credits’. In terms of performance, conventions of the genre have been used in the lip-syncing of the lyrics. A generic convention of the hip hop/rap genre is for the artist to be shown performing their own song. An example of this is in Snoop Dog’s video for ‘That Tree’.