Friday 30 September 2011

Initial Music Video Analysis

Video being analysed : 50 Cent - Candy Shop
How do the visuals respond to the music?
During my analysis of this music video, I noticed several major things, this included, that during the start, when they heavy bass and beat comes into the song, the cuts are on times to the music. This shows use of synaesthesia, where the sounds have been made visual.
Also, I noticed during the verses, you a majority of what you saw was the women in his 'Candy Shop', but during the Chorus, he is the in most of the shots and the most important figure.
To what extent is there a narrative?
The narrative begins with him driving up to a spooky old mansion (a traditional British horror film setting). He goes into the door, and it turns out to be a brothel of sorts, named the 'Candy Shop'. He goes in, and enjoys himself. He then wakes up outside of a drive through of a 'Candy Shop'. It was all a dream (very cliché & not advised to be used in videos, film or even literature nowadays). This was supposed to be a male fantasy, or, to be exact, 50 Cent's fantasy.
What kind of image is the star presenting?
The image of 50 Cent in this video is very stereotypical for a modern Gangster/Rap Star. For example, he is a stereotypical African American 'gangster', he wears a pimp coat, has a large necklace on an even larger chain and he has lots of tattoos. Also, he uses product placement for his own brand of G-Unit clothing. Also, the Male Gaze is used many times in this video, showing 50 Cent as the strong, dominant male.
What is used and why? (Cinematography, Mise En Scene, Editing)
There are jump cuts in time with the music, which follows with Andrew Goodwin's idea of the music creating the music video, and not the other way around. There are also many reaction shots, to show it's his point of view, and that he is the dominant Alpha in the video. The Male Gaze is used within the video to sexualise the women, and make them more like objects than real people.
They used the English horror idea at the beginning in the Mise-En-Scene to make it seem almost unreal and like a fairytale. Which would be the case for 50 Cent, where this is his fantasy.
Is the video literal, disjunctive or amplifying?
There are mixed parts of each of these in the video. For example, in the lyrics he says "I'm the love doctor" on the scene where he is sat what seems to be a hospital bed, with a Nurse standing over him, touching his chest. However, other than this, there are no literal lyrics. During the last scene, where he wakes up and it's all a dream, it shows an element of disjunctive, as it says nothing of this within the lyrics.
However, mainly, it would show to be an Amplifying video, as there is an extra layer of meaning to the songs, the 'lollipop' is obviously a metaphor for his sexual organ, but you never actually see him letting anyone lick his, or an actual lollipop. Also, the video doesn't actually follow the lyrics as they don't tell a story, they just talk about his sexual prowess, and how much he wants to have sex with the women he is talking about or to.

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