Monday 11 July 2011
Analysing - Eminem, Not Afraid
The music video for Eminem's 'Not Afraid' is an illustrative, amplification and symbolic video as it tells the story of the song's lyrics. The following Tubechops are examples of the relationship between the song and the visuals.
In this clip there is a relationship between the lyrics and the visual; there is an explicit illustration where the lyrics 'you can try and read my lyrics off of this paper before I lay them...' are accompanied by the artist holding a piece of paper and scrunching it up.
In this clip we have another relationship between the lyrics and the visual through hand gestures by the artist. The lyrics 'im doing this for me' is joined by the artist patting himself on the chest to reflect the lyrics and give them more of an impact as it is a memorable action. We also have the lyrics 'tearing down your balcony' where we see the artist at this point, slamming his arm down with anger to enforce his authority and power which again reflects the lyrics and shows his increasing status.
Also during the clip, the artist spreads his arms in a gesture reminiscent of Stigmata, thus amplifying his rise to glory and achievment.
In this clip of the video, there is a distinctive relationship between the music and the visuals where as the artist is standing on the pavement, we hear no beat, but when he steps into the road, the beat resumes infering that it is an important poignant part of the narative. There is then an amlification between the lyrics and visuals at a moment when the artist looks into his reflection in a car window and sees his face melting and going black, which symbolises him not knowing who he is and that he needs to change.
In the first part of this clip we see the artist walking past several mirrors and looking in them with confusion, this is accompanied by the lyrics 'but i think im still trying to figure this crap out....' which is another amplification of the meaning, which is that he is trying to get away from his past and solve his problems for the better. The clip then goes into the artist being completely surrounded by mirrors when the chorus begins and this emphasises his life to be like he is trapped in it and that he cannot escape, however the artist then becomes more confident and stronger as the chrous progresses and then smashes through one of the mirrors and ends up lying on the road, where he has escaped to.
In this clip there is a direct link between the lyrics and visuals where the lyrics '....can't keep living this way, so starting today, im breaking out of this cage' is accompanied by the artsist punching and breaking away a wall where he can see light coming through, and this is both an amplification of him breaking out aswell as an illustration as the wall he smashes through is kind of like a metaphorical cage. We then hear the lyrics 'im standing up, imma face my demons, im man enough imma hold my ground' which is presented with the visuals of the artist standing up, walking forward slighlty and holding his ground which refers to him having to face his own demons and his own negatives which he has created himself.
As record companies will demand alot of close-ups of the artist in a music video, in this clip there are close-ups about every 5 seconds and throughout the whole music video there are close-ups about 5 ot 6 seconds apart. These are very useful as they show the artists emotions throughout the video and it allows us to recieve the lyrics in a more meaningful way. This allows us to understand what he is going through and it is a good way of him connecting with the audience.
From analysing this video, we have learnt some important things which will help us in producing a music video of a similar genre. The first thing is that hand gestures are key to hip-hop music video - they help show the narrative of the song, provide a visual stimulus for the audience (meaning the song is being taken in via two senses, rather than one, making it more memorable), and generally 'livens up' the performance shots - if the performer was just stood there making no movements, the result would be boring and lifeless.
Another thing we have learnt is that shots of feet can be used to great effect. They draw attention to the actions of the feet (ie, walking) thus giving the actions impact and importance.
We would like to try to emulate a couple of techniques from this video for our own. One is the flying; although we wouldn't be able to do big special effects, the close-ups of flying would be relatively simple to accomplish (more to come - we shall be trying this in the future). Another aspect we think would work in our video is the performance shots which are back-lit - we think this gives an effective silhouette look.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)