My 3 top artists are 50 Cent, T.I. and Young Jeezy
50 Cent - Window Shopper
Expensive cars, beautiful women, rich environment, designer clothes, south of france, alot of money (400$ burger), very baggy clothes, a lot of jewellery, alcohol and fine dining
Prison environment, baggy clothes prison clothes, ghetto environment, performance based of artists rapping, bandanas
Expensive cars and designer clothes, a lot of money involved in the video, beautiful women, baggy clothes, bandanas, alcohol
The conventions of a hip hop genre music video include many things. The sets or location are usually clubs, streets, parties or fancy places. There’s a lot of money involved in the videos and you can see rappers throwing around money. There’s usually a lot of expensive jewellery, cars, clothes (usually very baggy), big houses and alcohol on display. If the setting isn’t in a rich environment it’s usually a ghetto area such as the streets/projects where there’s a representation of gang culture, violence, guns, drugs and sex. The camera shots tend to be long and always establish the flash of the video by focusing on the money or expensive props. There’s usually close-ups of the rappers performing and close ups of the money, expensive cars, money, alcohol. There’s a lot of voyeurism when it comes to camerawork and there usually are a lot of close ups of half-naked women dancing around in sexual ways. The videos don’t really follow a storyline but is just a chance for the artist to show himself performing and show off.
I've analyzed the film openings of the three movies '300', 'Mean Streets and 'Blade II' concluding similarities and differences between them in my conclusion.
Mean Streets:
Starts of with Warner Bros. Logo and blank black screen. – red writing
Starts with voice-over of man
Close up of man waking up from sleep, free-hand camera movement
Police sirens in the background and sound of cars etc. urban background
Camera follows him through the room and when he looks at himself in the mirror
Music starts abruptly as he puts his head on his pillow with jump-cuts and zooms into his face (close-up). The music sounds old fashioned
Shot goes to next scene of a projector, camera still moving in a freehand fashion
Shot then changes to an olden film
The name of the film ‘Mean Streets’ then appears on the screen in big red writing then shows all the names and credits while a film plays in the background of random men. Footage looks old fashioned.
Slow paced
300:
Starts with black background and blood splattering, with the directors names etc (credits) – red writing
War-like music and instruments for music
Pictures of horses with men on them who have harpoons sticking out of their bodies
Names are on the horses and the camera quickly zooms out to more horses which have other names
Fast paced
Animated
About a third of the way through the name of the film (300) appears in big red writing
Names of cast then appear
Blade II:
Starts with blank black screen with red writing and an action kind of melody in the background and logo ‘New Line Cinema’
The camera then appears to be moving sideways as a new scene slowly transitions into the screen, the new scene is blurry in the background but there are chains hanging that are in focus. A voice-over then comes in – side pan?
The voice-over introduces himself as ‘Blade’ (the main character)
The scene then cuts into a hospital scene – again transitioning from the side giving it a train like effect
The camera continues to move to the right throughout the trailer
A lot of close ups of different activities but conceals who’s doing it, just shows the object etc.
Red writing then appears again with names
Close-ups of a lot of different weapons
At the end the title of the film then appears ‘Blade II’ in a font made out of blades.
All three openings are similar as the genre maybe similar, they all may include violence because they all starts with black dark background with red big writing which represents violence, danger, gore maybe. ‘Mean Streets’ and ‘Blade II’ start with a logo whereas 300 doesn’t and they both have a lot of close-ups of different things or people, maybe to establish the personality of the character, what he looks like or who he is. In the 300’s case it’s just a long sequence of credits but with pictures in the background of gory war images. Mean Streets and Blade II have voice-overs which may also be used to establish the characters.
