What is a music video- Miss Miller

A music video is a short film integrating a song or imagery, which is used for promotional or artistic features. Modern day music videos are mainly a marketing tool, which may feature cool futuristic effects, or an interesting story behind the song itself. It may also be to send an important and serious message, such as Band Aid's "Feed the world". In general, it is used to showcase the artist who is behind the song. There are many codes and conventions you can expect to see in a music video, which all depend on the genre of music, for example, for Heavy Metal you may expect to see a lot of black, gore and danger, and animals such as snakes and scorpions, whilst in a dance music video, you may expect to see bright colours, dance routines and males and females who show themselves off, for example girls in bikinis.

For this post, I will analysing K Camp ft Kwony cash- Money baby, which falls under the "hip-hop" genre. At the start of the video, there is a mid-shot of the two rappers travelling to a big luxurious house, which is stereotypical and conventional to the hip-hop genre, as artists who specialise in this type of music often like to flaunt what they have and show others how much money they have. Following this, we then see a montage of shots added together, which all show nice furniture and also a bar inside the house, again items that aren't available to all, and the artist also wants to show his fans what his every day life is like, possibly in an attempt to impress them. Iconography is also present as at one point there is even a close up of a bag of money which is eventually carried out of the house by the two rappers, again deliberately trying to convey how much money they have.

Another convention of hip-hop videos is you can usually expect to see many women appear in them, usually revealing themselves, as male hip-hop artists like to give the impression they have a lot of women available to them, and can get a lot of girls with the amount of money they make, and also how well known they are through fame. Typically this can be seen as a competition across  music videos between fellow hip-hop artists, as the more luxurious items and women they have in the video, the more popular and "cool" they seem. This is present at the beginning of this video and also throughout, as the rappers appear to be hosting a pool party, as a high angle shot followed by close-ups of women in bikinis diving in a pool shows this.

Hip-hop artists may also be associated with drug use, and can afford high amounts of drugs because of the money they have, K-camp mentions his drug use in his lyrics, with the first line of this song being "I like smoking weed I like getting fly". These lyrics are said whilst not only is he holding money, but also expensive champagne, again using iconography to showcase his wealth. He wants the viewer to believe he has so much money, that even girls are swimming for piles of it underwater, also further showing his wealth with a close up of him throwing money at the camera. Shots of girls in and around the pool in revealing outfits doing sexual and provocative dances could also be considered P.O.V shots, what the artists see inside the pool and it puts the viewer in their eyes if they were having this party with all these women around them.

Hip-hop artists may also want to be seen as promiscuous, having a lot of women to showcase themselves as a "player", which has been doing throughout hip-hop history by artists such as Notorious B.I.G and 50 Cent. Not only are the artists in this video constantly surrounded by many women, the lyrics also support promiscuity, as K-camp mentions "I like taking n***as hoes but I stopped doing that". This is further supported with lyrics that follow after this about how he likes his sexual intercourse with women. He is trying to show this is just another day in the life of a rich hip-hop artist, and that it is only for the selected few and he is superior and good enough to have it, saying "You ain't in my crew if you ain't tryna get rich".

There are then various shots and fast editing of them leaving the party in an expensive jeep, with a tracking shot of one of the rappers throwing money out of the vehicle, again showing further just how much money he has, as he has been throwing it around and holding it the whole entire video, which shows he has so much money, it may be seen as worthless to him that he can just throw it everywhere. The music video ends with Kwony cash's verse, where he again talks about drug use and women. The ending shots feature the artists holding more money and also with their fellow crew member, and the women left dancing in the pool.

Various elements of mis en scene throughout the video are used for the purpose of displaying conventions of the rap genre and also to make the artist look "cool". The money notes are an example of mis en scene, and connote that the artist is very rich and that money is just an object to him, making fans idolise him and wanting to live the easy life that he does. Another example of mis en scene is the cars in the video, which again shows the luxurious lifestyle of the rappers and as well as making fans idolise them, it also supports genre conventions as rappers are usually known to flaunt their valued and high priced possessions.

Overall, this video features a performance, a narrative and a concept. It features a performance, as both rappers are on screen performing in their video, there is not much of a narrative or a story to this, song just about how much they like money and they amount of women they have. The concept of this song/music video can be seen in a number of ways. It can be seen to have positive messages, it can motivate viewers to work hard at their goals, more so if they are an aspiring artist, to work hard enough to eventually get everything they want and dream about, unlimited disposable income, all the girls they want and a luxurious house. However, it can be seen to have bad messages, the song and video clearly objectify women and drug use is commonly mentioned, which others may be influenced to treat women disrespectfully or try drugs because their favourite artist or a successful one uses them. This video helped me to think about the genre I wanted to make and that my video may be primarily performance based, fans seeing this while idolise the artist and be drawn into their performance and also the story that they're in in the music video, which makes it interesting and also appealing.

1) Elaborate on why certain micro-elements, styles are used within the video, and how it enables the artist to further represent themselves/appeal to the TA
2) When referring to generic conventions, you need to mention how and where the video analysed follows, challenges, or adapts these conventions and why
3) Don't focus on lyrics of the song too much - analyse editing, MES and camera
4) Need to mention the different styles of videos and what their purposes are
5) Explain how this video has helped you to think about the genre and style of video you may want to create