Cassidy Ft R.Kelly- Hotel Analysis

R Kelly Blog-

R Kelly Twitter-
MISE EN SCENE
In terms of the mise en scene, this video covers many aspects that a contemporary R&B music video will include such as the props, costume, location and people. The video includes stereotypical locations such as hotel and club/bar setting which insists that they are living the "hollywood" lifestyle. The hotel location suggests that the music artists are always travelling due to being in the "fast lane" in life. A hotel room also has connotations of partying and sex which has been inhabited by these artists living the rich life, love isn't wanted they just want to fulfill their sexual desires. There is a medium shot of a plaque on the door saying "presidential suite" this further implies that they are living a wealthy lifestyle and that they believe that they are V.I.P's.
The costume worn by both artists has many connotations and semantics. R.Kelly, the R&B icon, is dressed in a pink mask and a pink hat with a pink basketball jersey and trousers. These colours have many representations that have been created mostly by films but has been adopted into this video. The pink and white outfit has a semantic field with a pimp. A pimp is a person, especially a man, who solicits customers for a prostitute or a brothel, usually in return for a share of the earnings. As prostitution is illegal the mask may indicate that his idenitity must be supressed. R.Kelly does not mean this literally, the representation he is implying is that he is somewhat of a sex icon to women, his wealth and appearance alures women to fornicate with him. This is a common stereotype that alot of contemporary artists imply, that they are somewhat of a sex symbol with their wealth and style. The other artist, Cassidy, a young R&B artist, wears a sports tracksuit, baseball jacket and a baseball cap. This is all very stereotypical to the Hip Hop & R&B genres as sometimes these intertwine. These tracksuits and hats imply an urban "hood" look, many artists try to represent their hometown through music either through lyrics or clothing as there is a sense of "state pride". In this video the women is dressed in a provocative way which insists stereotypes of proestitution especially with the costume of R.Kelly intertwined, she is dressed in a lace see through dress with underwear on, this has a semantic field of sexy lingerie which also links to sexual fantasies and desires. The props used are expensive luxuries such as champagne, sports cars (ferrari) and diamond chains. All of these are very stereotypical to the R&B genre as artists want to imply that they are living a fast and wealthy life saturated in materialistic luxuries.

CAMERA
A variety of camera shots are used to represent a situation in a specific way. For example, there is a long shot of the hotel room when the female is dancing over Cassidy, this represents Cassidy as being fairly dominant as he has a women dancing for him, it also has conotations of a strip club, paying a female for what is known as a "lap dance" of which the females dances in a provocative manor to seduce the male. This long shot also shows the hotel room, as commented on before, the hotel room has many common stereotypes of partying and sex.


There is also a long shot of Cassidy in a club setting looking across the bar at a female, This represnts him as being wealthy and powerful. Alcohol is also a common stereotype of the R&B genre as as well as other genres such as Hip Hop and Rock&Roll.
Another shot used is a close up of the artist Cassidy kissing the female who is lying on top of him. This represents the women to be in control of him but also represents him being powerful as there are many historical values that the man that can get the most women is seen as the alphamale and this is what he seems to be implying in this video through the use of props such as cars and money.

In the bar there is a use of chiascuro lighting to illuminate Cassidy, he is dressed in all white and has spot lights on top of him. This may suggest that they want to emphasize his presence at the bar, or they are trying to represent him to be rich and powerful. The colour which suggests purity and "angel like" features. This may be another way he is representing himself to women as some what "Godly".

ENCODING/DECODING

The preferred reading of this video insists that of a "Rock & Roll/Hollywood" lifestyle including drugs,alcohol, sex and money. No dark messages are present such as illness or poverty, all of these are juxtaposed by the lyrics, costume, location and props which insist that of a party lifestyle. Alcohol, Money and Women are the way to satisfy ones need's in life, which of course is not applicable to real life (to some). The Gratifications given from this video are that of entertainment and escapism as it is promotes how different their lifestyle is when their wealthy. It offers social interaction as the people within the video will socially interact and talk about the song or video. it offers escapism as people watching the video can imagine living that lifestyle. There are many reprsentations given off in this video, the key representation in terms of collective identity is that these R&B males are somewhat of alphamales as they are rich and can spend lots of money on alcohol, sex, drugs and luxuries. Another key representation is that women are just "meat" they are only needed to fulfull sexual desires, there is no sense that love exists, all these artists want to do is have fun. Women aren't represented as delicate, elegant and graceful, they are represented as sexual figures dressed provocatively in order to get sexual attention.

There are many hegemonic factors present, firstly in the women used, she is a very slim build with big assets as this has been mediated in comtemporary print and social media. Another ideology given off in this video is that poverty and other world affairs don't exist, these individuals just party every day with their wealth.

EDITING

In terms of editing there isn't a alot of techniques used. The are rapid cuts that take place throughout, no shot is longert that 2/3 seconds. On the other hand there is some scenes that have been slowed down, for example when the girl is pulling the cover over the both of them, the slow motion may suggest that they are about to have an intimate encounter. The rapid cuts might symbolise the fast lifestyle that they are living, on a deeper note, it may represent a sense of adrenaline sort of thing, due to the alcohol, drugs and sex in their lifestyle. At the beginning a "cinema" type transition is used, the shot of the door with a tag on introducing the artsists and the song scrolls out from black. This might suggest that what they do is behind closed doors, or another idea is that the black suggests emptyness, but due to their wealth suddenly its all turned into a big party. The tag on the door is also globally recognised, these tags on the doors often say "do not disturb" which then links to more sexual references.

Ne-Y0- So Sick Of Love Songs

Contemporary Artist

Example of a slow tempo R&B video that narrates a story.

Secondary Theories

Laura Mulvey a British Feminist Film Theorist claims that media is patriacle to men. All types of media is for the benefit and use of the "male gaze". She describes men as voyeurs and through gaining pleasure through peeping at others. This applies to my brief as many contemporary R&B videos support this. For example, music videos consist of creating euphemistic symbols aswell as representing women in a sexual way in terms of clothing and movement.

Our video will juxtpose this as our video is going to look very dark in terms of connotations, it will be black and white and focus on one male going through distressing times. There may be girls featured but they will not be shown in a sexual manor.

Experiencing Music Video- Carol Vernallis
Carol wrote a book about what conventions and stereotypes follow the making of a music video. She explains some features that are visible and how they are usually created. She says "some writers about music video have claimed that videos work primarily as narratives, that they function like parts of movies or television shows, others have wanted to say that music video is fundamentally antinarrative a king of post modern pastiche that actually gains energy through defying narrative conventions"

Vernallis also says "Music video presents a range all the way from extremely abstract videos emphasizing colour and movement to those that convey a story."

We will be following and taking this into account when creating our music video. We are more likely to convey a story as the song that we have chosen is quite dark with powerful indoctrinating lyrics. The majority of the video will be black and white to follow the connotations of the song.
Experiencing Music Video- Carol Vernallis

Rhythm & Blues History

Rhythm & Blues, often abreviated to R&B, was a name given to a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940's. It was created through a mix of many genres such as jazz, rock and roll, electric blues, soul and gospel music.

The meaning behind the term has different meanings for example. The "rhythm" part comes from the music's typical dependance upon four-beat measures or bars and employ a backbeat (beats two and four accented in each measure). And the "blues" portion came from the lyrics and melodies of the songs, which were often sad, or 'blue' during the music's emergence in the World War II era. Over time the name was shortened to R&B as a matter of convenience.

The "Rhythm & Blues" term was created to replace the term "race music," which until then was the stardard catch-all phase used in reference to most music made by blacks at the time. After the "race music" term was deemed offensive, Billboard began using the Rhythm & Blues name that Jerry Wexler created. By the 1970's R&B was a blanket term used for the soul and funk genres as R&B was the most popular. It was later introduced into Britain in the 1960's due to the popularity of it in America with Pop & R&B icons such as Micheal Jackson.

Some say Rhythm and Blues was created by slaves as they used to sing and create music in order to communicate and pass messages a famous one being "wait in the water".

The Blues Brothers then furthered the R&B genre and became very popular as they juxtaposed the African American stereotype of R&B.

Icons such as Marvin Gaye and James Brown were very popular but now R&B has changed and is less soulfull.

R.Kelly is also a R&B and Soul icon aswell as Gospel, he is very popular as he added his own idiosyncratic style on R&B, others followed him such as Usher, and now icons today such as Drake.

James Brown R.Kelly Usher Drake

Audience Identification

When chosing the genre of the music video, we took many things into consideration, one of which is that we talked about the genre. Collectively as a group, we knew the most about R&B and Hip Hop and as they are the most influential genres to youth culture we decided to undertake this.

When it comes to target audience we took many aspects into consideration Daniel Chandler's theory, these aspects included social status, age, gender and other media consumptions for example what they would read and watch. In terms of social grouping we have decided to target a young age group from ages 16-22 and both genders, we decided this as it reflects our age group and we have an idea of what interests teenagers and those of a younger age group.

We will also be targetting the social status of these teenagers from the C1 to E categories. We chose this as we took education into consideration, youths are likely to be still in some sort of education. This was also another aspect we took into consideration and schools, colleges and universities are such compact communities, it is more likely for our music trailer to become very popular in a short space of time.

I will be using Dyers Utopian Solutions Theory to motivate and engage our audience, offering the young target audience the "solutions" and "energy" through our music video. This theory gives the audience a sense of escapism and could encourage audiences who are suffering from exhaustion from every day-to-day life to feel energised and exhillarated, giving them another reason to watch. This theory relates to 10 key words; Inadequacy, Poverty, Confusion, Exhaustion, Isolation, Solution, Abundance, Clarity, Energy and Community.

A music video may offer energy through content and storyline which may be something like a party scene or a scene that builds up tension and an atmosphere, it may also be brought by special effects or camera movement/type. A music video tampers with the audience emotions but with the reasurrance with melody, tempo and bass. This enables us to create an unusual storyline which could oppose social norms relating to the lyrics.

I also looked at Maslow's Hierachy of Needs. This theory relates to these key themes; Safetey- offering assurance of safety, physically, emotionally and psychologically. Affiliation- the need to belong to a group. Esteem- the need to feel good about our selves. In the sense of a music video Maslow's hierachy of needs offeres originality and identity such as the listener/watcher feeling part of a community underneath the subheading of the R&B genre. Music videos build tension and atmosphere tampering with the audiences emotions through lyrics and different tempo's.

I will be using Graeme Burtons social grouping theory for target audience as he looks at; age, gender, social status, race, location etc. This is his first classification, his second classification consists of grouping media audiences via relationship with media, for example "concert goers", music listeners etc. I can then base my final identification socially or base it on my target audiences relationship with the media of which is two ideologies Burton promotes. Lastly, Hartley continues to narrow down social grouping; Aspirations- ambitious people? offer a motive such as performance enhancement and many other things such as style, cultural imperialism and social norms.

Target Audience Age: 16-22
Social Status- C1-E
Nationality- English (American+Britain)
All ethnicities
All Genders
Income- 0-18k

Introductory Post- Music Video

During a discussion, our group decided to create a music video as this was a new and interesting topic of which we could all use our idiosyncratic skills and attributes to the best of our ability. I am working with 2 other students, Eugene and Elise. Eugene undertook Graphics and Media at AS level so he can bring originality and creativity to the design of the trailer. On the other hand Elise brings key skills in the planning and preparation of the trailer as she is very organised, punctual and knowledgable and can bring key aspects of English Literature to the trailers advantage. Lastly i believe that i can bring original ideas and use my media knowledge to make the film as close to the genre as possible following the typical conventions. My key skill is the linguistics as i took English Language at AS Level, so i shall be helping with the script as well as the analytical side to creating the video such as the evaluation. I also think i have a good knowledge of how to create an authentic and original print piece using my basic editing skills learnt from AS level Media Studies. Last year i created a Hip Hop magazine so therefore alot of the research can be applicable to the music video. You can see this blog by going onto last years AS Level blog by clicking on this link...We are very enthusiastic about making a video for such a recognised and popular genre.

Music has a huge part to play in contemporary society especially the youth. Youths follow social norms and ideologies that they see represented through certain popular genres such as Hip Hop, R&B and Grime, these genres are classed as "urban city music". As music is such an influence in todays society and as we are tge age of the target audience, we found it upon ourselves to create our own music video of which we could then use our own knowledge in order to make it successful.

We will be adopting familiar conventions and following the ideologies of Neale who suggested that there is "a system of expectations between audiences and institutions."

In terms of typical conventions and stereotypes we will be using mise en scene that can be easily recognised from other contemporary videos aswell as using media techniques to emphasise these things, pathetic falacy is an example of this. We will be looking at scenaries such as old churches, abonded derelict houses, streets of London etc. We will be looking at contemporary digipacks (cd cases) posters and videos that have been recently successful and take note of what aspects they used and try to follow them.

Drake, a contemporary R&B/Hip Hop artist sold 440,000 copies in the opening week of his album, icons such as himself will be used during research.