In our music video, we made use of lip syncing, a convention which is commonly seen in many music videos. We chose to include lip syncing in the music video as many of the videos we have previously analysed for the blog, "Burn, Burn" by Lostprophets and "It Wasn't Me" by Shaggy. We also included lip syncing as many "gangsters", who we attempted to imitate, enjoy rapping. Whilst the lip-syncing may have been better in some places, we think the overall quality of the lip-syncing is very good.
The style of the music video is intended to be comical. This is in contrast to many hip-hop and rap videos, which are often serious. Therefore, we subverted the conventions of hip-hop and rap videos. We chose to do this because, as a group, we thought our skill set would be better suited to a comical storyline. In the creation of the plot, we were heavily influenced by The Lonely Island, who take a light-hearted approach to their videos. Judging by the feedback we have received from fellow students, outside of our media class, it seems that the video has achieved its humourous purpose.
In terms of the costume, we followed conventions of stereotypical clothing worn by gangsters. As you can see from the vidcap, each member of the gang is wearing a 'hoodie', tracksuit bottoms and trainers as well as a golfing glove. The main gangster can also be seen wearing a bandana around his neck. We felt it was vital to dress like this to convey the idea that we are gangsters. However, we also decided to dress the main gangster in a pair of spectacles, so as to show that we are a failure at being gangsters. It appears, however, that the people who have so far seen our video, did not fully get the message of the parodying nature of the clothing. It could be said, then, that the clothing may have been a failure; we disagree with that view the viewers did still find the costumes funny, just not in the parodying way we hoped for.
Within the video, we made use of James' car. This was used as cars are often seen within a gangster and rap music videos. However, the cars are often big Range Rovers or stylish sports cars. This is a contrast to James' Toyota Yaris, which is pictured above. Again, this is an example of the gang trying to be full fledged gangsters but failing miserably. Again, with the costumes, the viewers found some of the props, like the candy sticks, humourous but just not in the parodying way. Therefore, this section did not work as well as we had hoped.
The locations used within the music video are also intended to be comical and subvert the general conventions of rap videos as they are not usually filmed in a suburban area. Instead, they are shot in inter-city locations. Owing to many people whose properties we wished to use in our video refusing to allow us to film there, many of the locations had to be changed from the original. Here, again, the message of middle-class "ganagsters", failed to get through to many of our viewers, but again we still think this worked well within our video from an artistic point of view/
The above three images all show different examples of the camerawork used within the music video, each of them displaying a different type of shot. We decided to use a variety of shots within the video to obviously prevent the video from becoming boring, as all the humour would have been lost if the same shot wa used constantly. Furthermore, some shots were used to create an effect, such as the close-up on the carton of Tropicana for the appropriate lyrics. As a group, we believe that the shots used in the video were of a good calibre and the attempt to use a variety of shots were successful.
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