Reviewing early stages

When we were first presented with songs to make a music video for by our teachers, the song we ended up using (Broken Silence) was not an option. When we first heard the options presented to us by the teachers me and my group were feeling not only dissapointed but nervous because there were no songs we could see ourselves making a music video with. i believe this was the case because the teachers were not aware of the music we were into (grime/rap). This may have been the case because of generational factors, or cultural factors. However we confronted our teachers about the problem we had and they were very willing to allow us to use a song which woulkd allow our creativity to be exploited to its maximum level.

LYRICS ANAYLSIS, (Third verse)

LYRICS ANAYLSIS, (Second verse)

LYRICS ANAYLSIS, (First verse)

Inspiration for shots

 I took inspiration from other media texts in order to gain inspiration for our music video, I found the use of extreme close ups work very well whilst trying to show emotions, and considering our music video's key aim is to evoke the sympathy of th audience thse shots would be key. Firstly the use of an extreme close up with a knife... this both allows us to see the victims expression against the prop and the attacker!  

 I like the way the protagonist is in the centre of the frame, this highlights his vulnerability and allows the audience to sympathise with him. I particularly like the way the attackers hand is in the lefthand third of the frame. In our final music video we used a similar shot, to help portray vulnerability.

This shot is very chaotic as it includes both the protagonist and a police car! this connotations of this shot typically conform to the conventions of a grime music video and violence is dominant and the police is seen as the enemy! I think this shot in our music video could represent the split between wrong and right! I likt the way the frame is split into two, we have also used this similar shot!

A shot of the protagonist on public transport is rather essential, as it represents a journey and it allows us to show the the audience where we have set the video... In our music video an underground sign reading, (SOUTH WIMBLEDON) like the one behind the man in this inspiration shot is used! We stressed the importance of this shot as it represents a typical london atmosphere.   

Changing our music for our video!

When we where told about producing a music video, we where all initally very eager to begin brainstorming ideas, however the audio avaliable, didn't necessarily stimulate our thoughts... my group felt that the choices our teachers provided would hinder us, because we could not necessarily provide all the materials e.g. instruments needed to make a believable video. We understood that purhaps our teachers didnt include music that we could possibly relate to, because our idea of relatable music may seem a little risky to them, because of the violent connotations of grime music, my group therefore thought what if we could challenge the typical conventions of a grime music video. We chose broken silence by so solid crew, we picked this song because it was very obvious to us that with this we could achieve our aim! The song broken silence, discusses the difficulties faced by youths caught up in violence. We thought that we had many resources that could realistically portray our attempt to challenge such conventions.

Issues with the genre

The grime/hip hop genre has come under scrutany from the government because some of the music steming from it has been said to contain violent and vulgar lyrics that encourage gun and knife crime and gang culture among specifically the black youth. The goverment ran a taskforce called operation trident to tackle this problem, operation has recently been highlighted within the grime community for intefeering and trying to dilute the harsh lyrics of a popular grime artist named "Giggs" also known as "Hollowman". Operation trident has been critised for restricting the freedom of speech of the grime artist and thus holding their carrer movement back. The artist Giggs was prevented from touring the UK by the police and operation trident, and as a result it has caused a sense of resentmen towards the police and trident frome grime/rap fans. The police and operation Trident have been recently critisised by the guardian newspaper for cancelling Gigg's U.K tour and have said that the police and trident should be asking grime/rap artists to speak out against gun/knife crime instead of cancelling shows.