Conventions of the Music Video - Joe Jones

The video I have chosen to analyse is 'I'm on a Boat' by The Lonely Island. I felt this was appropriate as they are a rap spoof group, so the sort of videos they produce will be something similar to the idea we are trying to create. The video itself follows many of the conventions of a typical Music Video; including aspects of performance and narrative and also a 'hook'.
Firstly, I will focus on the performance elements. They lip sync to the music and combine narrative and performance, although the narrative itself isn't much of a narrative, its simply that they get a free boat ride. Also, they use conventions of the rap genre and parody them, this is seen in the high angle shot below, showing the two men rap into the camera, with lots of vigorous hand movements, a shot seen commonly in rap videos over the years.



Again, the idea of humour and comedy is something we are very interested to incorporate in our Video, with a view to spoofing the Rap genre. Below are shots again of this high angle shot where the Men rap aggressively into the camera lens, but they do this wearing sailor outfits, thus simply but effectively making fun of this kind of shot seen so often in Rap videos.



Also, a popular convention of a pop video is to have some sort of dance routine or arrangement. This is used in a way in the video, however they dance is intentionally disjointed and unorganised, in order to create comedy. The dance scenes show the awkward situation as the two men from The Lonely Island literally lose themselves in the song as T Pain stands there moving slowly and coolly. This contrast highlights the ridiuclous movement of the two men and helps to create humour.