Video Analysis

I am going to study 2 different music video's, one by Wu-Tang Clan and another by a similar group that are under the same genre: Hip hop/rap. The second video I am going to study is by the group Cyrpress Hill.

I will be looking at and comparing both video's by writing about their representation, narrative, audience and how the video's communicate meaning and their genre.

The first video I am analysing is the song 'Gravel Pit' by 'Wu-tang Clan':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGS7I8_UXhM

Representation:
The most obvious representation used in this video is of stereotypical men 'cave men'. Many males flaunting their wealth, strength, clothes and woman.
The video seems very sexist in that the men have female slaves or woman held captive and tied up. The woman have to dance for the men and they seem to not be respected, an obvious point is when one of the men hit a woman over the head with a club for no apparent reason and then drags her off by her hair.
Another stereotype is that the men fight in the 'gravel pit', this reminds me of the old gladiator arena's, at one point in the video the camera zooms out to show the 'arena' and there is a sound effect added of people cheering.
The video turns into a stereotypical Chinese fighting scene, where Wu-tang clan turn into Ninjas and fight against other ninjas. The men are portrayed as having super powers- being able to fly into the sky.
I would say the only un-stereotypical element of the video is that the theme of cave men and ninjas is quite unusual for a hip hop group's video.

These are some examples of my ideas- print screens: showing the caveman theme, the woman held hostage, the clothes and jewels being flunted and the expensive looking clothes.






Narrative:
The story of the video seems to be told through the various members of Wu-tang Clan.
The basic story is that the main character's-Wu-tang clan- a large group of men are in an elevator after they had been clubbing and they all seem to want to go to different places, so various buttons get pressed in the elevator. The elevator turns into a time machine and sends them to the year 2000 BC.
They turn into cave men and flaunt their wealth and have female slaves.
And then towards the end of the video clip Wu-tang Clan turn into ninjas and start to fight other ninjas. I feel the narrative of the video is mostly a story of Wu-tang Clan having fun and pushing gender boundaries in being quite sexist in a comical way.

Audience:
I feel the audience for this video would be mostly Male between the ages 15-24 but with some female fans aged between 16-20. This tends to correlate with the results I came up with from their overall fan base in my previous blog.

Meaning:
I am not certain of the true meaning of this video but I feel from watching it that it may be a comical nudge at being a bit controversial with sexism.
The group seem to be having fun in the video which is nice to see as many hip hop video's can tend to be quite serious.
I feel that Wu-tang Clan wanted to show themselves having fun and show off their wealth and power.

Genre:
Hip hop/rap

The second video I am analysing is the song 'As we enter' by 'NAS and Damian Marley':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMGd3mAfl-0

Representation:
This video again is quite stereotypical of Hip hop video's with only males featuring in the video. Unlike the previous video by Wu-tang Clan this is quite serious and there is a sense of anger and a message trying to be sent out.
The dark clothes and hoodies are also another stereotypical aspect of this video.
I feel that the video is trying to represent that 'real hip hop is dead'- the famous saying. NAS and Damian Marley are extremely famous and almost always seem to sing about real issues in the world and are trying to bring hip hop back.

These are some print screens of the points I have made about males only featuring in the video- acting out to camera, the dark clothes and hoodies and dark and serious set and atmosphere.

Narrative:
This video is told through NAS and Damian Marley to 'us' the audience. It is as if they are actually speaking to the viewer by the way they look right into the camera and seem to talk to the viewer.
They take us on a short journey through words and seem to be stating they want to bring back 'real' hip hop and sing about real issues in the world compared to some commercial hip hop acts these days who seem to sing about wealth.
A few quotes from the video that back this idea up are 'Must be dementia that you could even think you could touch our credentials' and 'The king's is back, time to return the crown'.

Audience:
I feel the audience for this video/song would be similar to Wu-tang Clan's video as it is in the same genre but I feel that both woman and men would listen to this in more of an equal amount for example men 60% and woman 40% with both ages being between 16-45.

Meaning:
As I stated earlier I believe that this video/song is telling the audience that hip hop is going to change again and that it is no longer 'dead', that NAS and Damian Marley are going to give us 'real hip hop'.

Genre:
Hip hop/rap