Evaluation question 1- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our music video both conforms and challenges to the codes and conventions of music videos in general and hip hop music videos. The typical conventions of music videos include a number of close ups of the artist. This is to let the audience know who they are listening to. It also suits the demands of record labels. In addition to this, the editing of most videos is in sync with the beat and pace of the music. For example, fast paced music usually warrants quicker cuts and shorter shots.

Conventions of hip-hop music videos include lots of portrayal of wealth. Our video showed that by making the artist wear designer clothes. These clothes are a significant portrayal of the artists' wealth and highlights his journey from "rags to riches".





Power is also a key feature of hip hop videos and in our video we showed this by using low angle shots of our artist to make him look more dominant and more powerful than the audience. As the hip hop genre is quite dominated by male artists, the use of low angle shots makes them look more powerful. Also, shots of King J looking over at the city from a high angle represents his journey to the top and suggests he is now one of the most powerful people in the country as he is almost looking down at the place he grew up in.


In addition to this, party or club scenes are very conventional. We also incorporated one of these scenes into our video. We recreated a party scene in our video by using party lights and a smoke machine with some extras. However, as a way to slightly challenge this convention we made it so that the main artist King J was clearly not enjoying it, with everyone else around him enjoying themselves.

We would say that we have successfully conformed to the typical codes and conventions of music videos in general and also hip hop videos. However, we also set out to challenge the codes and conventions by making a whole sub narrative of King J being unhappy and attempting to escape from his past life instead of solely focusing on the successful career he has built and the expensive lifestyle he now has.