Music Video Analysis - Eminem

Eminem - The Real Slim Shady

http://youtu.be/eJO5HU_7_1w

Within the Eminem music video of 'The Real Slim Shady' there is a lot of bright colours which goes against the codes and conventions of a rap music video. I believe that he has done this to make his music videos original and unique. This shows that he wanted to stand out within the rap industry to make himself more of a star to the audience as this creates his down individual look. Within this screenshot from the music video you can see that he is in a waiting room at the beginning of the music video which  goes against the codes and conventions of a rap music video as the colouring is usually dull.

In this screenshot of Eminem's music video you can see a photograph of Dr Dre from NWA, through the time of Eminem's video showing this he says that Dr Dre is dead. This is promoting the rap industry within his music video as NWA was a extremely successful rap band a few years ago and are still very well known within the music industry. The NWA image was promoted by a film which was released in 2015 called 'Straight Outta Compton' about the rap band and all the troubles which they faced along the way through the build up too the success and how the rap star life was for them individually and how they all reacted to the new opportunities which they had. I believe including Dr Dre within Eminem's music video was effective because it shows a different rap artist within the industry and it could represent the direction Eminem wanted to go in through his music career by being a successful rap artist.

In the screenshot below of the music video there is a machine within the frame which ordinary people are going into which is shown on the left of the image and then once they come out they are a copy of Eminem as their hair and costume is the same as Eminem's through the video. This abides by Goodwin's theory as he is the main focus within the music video as he is making copies of himself in the video to show his followers and his fans and that he believes he is going to be a large. successful rapper.

Within this screenshot you can see Eminem rapping in a pink coloured room full of men who look like the artist, I believe that this is effective as it creates a clear image of the artist which will leave a lasting impression on the audience and make the artist recognisable to the audience. Having this scene in a pink room goes against the conventions of a rap music video as the colour is usually dull and boring but this scene is different and has a lot of lighting. This is effective as this makes the location of this scene look like they are in an underground subway by the lights and the different pictures which are located around the walls and on the ceiling which creates a messy image for the artist.

In this music video screenshot from The Real Slim Shady, you can see him looking down into the camera which makes the artist look like he has power and it makes the audience feel as if he is talking over them which makes them feel intimidated within this scene. This is powerful as it represents an image of Eminem that he is in control.

Through analysing this music video I like the idea of having the artist looking down on the camera as it makes the artist look powerful and in control of the music video and the people around him. I would like to create something like this within my music video. 

Next Steps

My next steps of our rap music video research is too begin planning my ancillary task with my group, we will do this through the different elements of Mise-en-Scene to plan the correct music video to benefit our group.

Location
Through our ancillary task we have planned to create the images for this around the area of our college of the Bitterne Park, Townhill Park/St Mary's area to be able to create the correct image for our ancillary. We have planned to use the skate park in Woodmill of the Bitterne Park area to create some shots for his to make the right affect for a rap artists digipak and magazine cover. We have decided to use this due to the Eminem poster for his album Recovery and the urban setting which it has on it, we would like to create something like this as this would appeal to the target audience as it fits in with the rap industries current style. In Townhill Park/St Mary's we are planning on taking photographs of a large block of flats to use within our digipak to create a more urban vibe for the audience.

Costume
We would like to have similiar costumes to what is currently being shown in the rap industries music video's as we know this fits in, but also having the artist look like a normal everyday person due to our results of our questionnaire of a lot of people selecting the option for a normal everyday person. This would appeal to our target audience as the large majority of people who answered our questionnaire was within the 17-20 age range which shows a lot of the people who selected a normal everyday person would have been from this age range. We could create this by showing a rapper through their clothing but having their facial appearance look like a normal everyday person.
For example within this photograph of Eminem on the right, he is dressed as an ordinary person but he also has his rap side to him which is clear that he is currently doing.



Style of Rap
We have decided to create a mainstream rap music video as this was the most popular, this has maintained from our initial ideas, I believe that the audience we had answer our questionnaire rated highly on mainstream rap instead of alternative rap because of the Tribe Wired Life Matrix audience we have. I believed this would be rated higher than alternative rap for this reason.

Props
Within our music video we have decided to involve different props which are within the codes and conventions of a rap music video as we have decided to incorporate different types of drunks and alcohol into our music video to fit in with the codes and conventions of a rap music video.

Why?
We have decided to create our music video using these different options through the research of our questionnaires which we sent out. Our final idea of our rap music video is based along side of out questionnaire to be able to meet the requirements of our audience as this shows the different parts which will  meet our target audience in order for our music video to be a success.

Audience Research

Demographic profiling

The demographic profiling grades which are are targeting is C2, D and E as this is the usual target audience for the rap industry. This is because stereo-typically people within the grades of C1, B and A people do not enjoy this type of music as they are more professional and do not listen to this music as they believe other genres of music are more enjoyable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRS_social_grade 

LifeMatrix
The LifeMatrix which my group have decided to target is Tribe Wired and Fun/Atics, we chose these areas to target as through our primary research into the music industry through our questionnaires the main age range was between 17-20 years old so we believe we would benefit more from focusing on this age range.

Tribe Wired - Digital, Free-Spirted, Creative young singles

Fun/Atics - Aspirational, Fun-Seeking, Active young people

On the question within our questionnaire of the choice between the two different layouts I expected the majority to chose option one of the magazine layouts because of the less writing and the large photograph which is eye catching and more appealing to the younger eye. Another reason I believe that more people selected the first layout is because its more within the Tribe Wired as it is digital, due to the '@' symbol which resembles 'at' which appeals more to the younger generation which are within the Tribe Wired section of the LifeMatrix as it shows the name of the artist and the time he will be there. When creating my questionnaire I expected the first layout to be selected more due to the age range which we was targeting within our research, this was because there is less writing to read which appeals to the younger generation as they do not like to read large amounts of text which is shown on the second layout as Tribe Wired people do more reading over the internet, this could be done my media convergence by having the article which is in the magazine to launch out to a wider audience.

Questionnaire Results

We created a questionnaire to receive come feedback of the music industry.

This is the questionnaire which we created:

Overall we got 24 people to fill out our questionnaire's from within our college and by members of the public to widen our range of answers.

Our Feedback
Through getting 24 questionnaires done we gathered a lot of research about the music industry and what the audiences we questioned are similar or different, our feedback is below.

1. In this pie chart it shows the different genders of the people who answered the questionnaire which we created. This shows that we asked people from the different genders which gives a larger research audience.

On this pie chart you can see that we had more female answer our questionnaire out of the 24 people. This shows that we had 16 females answer our questionnaire and 8 male. This shows that our results are mainly based from the opinion of women as more than half of the people who answered our questionnaires was female.

I believe that my groups results would have been more fair and a clearer understanding if we had more male's answer our questionnaire and to also widen our research.

2. Within this graph you can see the results showing the different age ranges we targeted to get feedback from. This shows that we asked people of  different variety of age ranges.

 

In this graph you can see the different ages of the people who answered our questionnaire, from within our results you can see in the graph above that our main audience from the people who answered our questionnaires was within the age range of 17-20 years old. From our 30 questionnaires 20 of our replies was from within the age range of 17 to 20 which shows the high majority of the age range. 

Due to this we have decided to target our music video of the age range of 17-20 years old because of the high amount of applicants was within this age range which will show that the majority of the results will be from this age range. I believe that this would have been better if we asked more people over the age of 20 to get a wider set of opinions of the music industry through different generations. 

3. On this pie chart you can see the amount of people that enjoy reading music magazines.

Within the pie chart you cans see the difference of people who enjoy reading music magazines and people who don't like reading music magazines. Within these results you can see that 19 people said that they do not enjoy reading music magazines, this had a negative affect on our questionnaire research as we was not gaining information from people who enjoy and have experience from reading music magazines.

I believe that this set of results would have been better if we asked more people who like music magazines as we would have been able to receive more names of music magazines to compare with each other to achieve a successful magazine cover for our music video.

4. Within this graph you can see the different types of music genres that have been chosen of which the members of our questionnaire audience have selected of ones which they enjoy.

Within this graph shows some the different options of genre of music which is currently popular by members of the public.Within out results we had 19 people select Rap as a genre which they liked. This was beneficial to us as we have chosen to study the rap industry, by 19 people selecting rap as a preferred music genre we was able to create an understanding of what the rest of the questionnaire said, as the final two questions are based within the rap industry so it benefited us with the people who answered our questionnaires to have previous knowledge of the genre.

Only three people chose 'Other' and they stated which other genres of music they like, they was Disney, Grime and Musicals. We gave this option within the questionnaire as we was not able to list all the genres within the music industry so we used the most popular and well-known genres within our questionnaire.


5.  Within this pie chart you can see the amount of people who prefer mainstream rap over alternative rap.

On this pie chart you can see the amount of people who prefer mainstream rap or alternative rap of the people who answered my groups questionnaire, above you can see that more than half of the people who selected rap as one of the music genres which they like, 14 our of the 24 people who selected rap as a genre which they like. This shows that more people who like rap prefer the mainstream rap such as Eminem, Snoop Dogg and Tech N9ne. 

Due to the results on this question from our questionnaire we have decided as a group to create a mainstream music video as this was rated higher than a alternative rap song like Ed Sheeran has created within his song 'You Need Me I Don't Need You'. 

6. On this pie chart you can see which layouts the members of the audience which is research for our music magazine cover which we are going to be creating for our music video.

On this pie chart you can see that from the different layouts below you can see that more than three quarters of the people who answered our questions believed that the first option on the left was a better layout, so due to this when it comes to us making our magazine page, I believe this one was selected more due to the nicer display and the less writing as this looks more appealing to read. On this question we also attached a "Why?" some of the responses we got was - 

"Looks more professional"

"The first one as it's more eye popping"

"Better lay out"

"Looks more sophisticated"

"The first because it has a quote that catches the eye and stands out more"

"Looks more modern"

This shows that the members of our audience who answered our questionnaire which means that when we make the music magazine we will use this layout which has been used in the first layout choice which was offered to the audience.

7. Within this graph you can see the different features which people can rate themselves, this enabled us to select our target audience for our rap music video to meet the codes and conventions of our target audience.

Within this graph you can see how the people who answered our questionnaires have described  themselves through the different options we did. The point of this question within the results was to find our LifeMatrix to be able to target our music video T the right age range. Due to these results we have chosen to study the Tribe Wired and Fun/Atics as these fall into the categories within the graph which was highly rated on (See Audience Research post for further information).


8. Within this pie chart you can see the if they would recommend listening to rap to others such as their family and friends.

In this pie chart you can see the amount of people would recommend the rap industry to their friends which would promote the rap industry. Through our research 13 people said yes and 6 people said no which shows that more people within our results would recommend the industry. This fits in well with the previous results of the preferred genres as 19 people had selected rap as a genre of music which they like which also shows that 6 people would not recommend it to a friend.

9. On this graph you can see what our audience want to see within a rap music video to meet the requirements of the public to en-order our music video is something members of the public will like.

In the graph above you can see that all selections offered for 'What do you want to happen to in a rap music video?' was selected but Storytelling had the highest amount of people select it with 13 out of 30. Through this in our music video which we will be creating we will involve a story behind the music video to meet the expectations from our audience. 

10. On this graph you can see the locations which the members of audience we selected to fill in our questionnaires believed would be a good location for a rap music video.

In this graph you can see the locations of where our audience believe the music video should be set by choosing areas which they would like to see a music video being filmed. Within our research 12 people answered City (Inner City), due to this we are going to have a city theme to our music video. 

11. On this graph you can see how we plan on making our artist look through looking at the opinions of the audience to choose our main artist and how they should look.

In this graph you can see how the audience wish to see the main artist within a rap music video, the highest selections was good looking and normal everyday person, so by this we are going to have a good looking person as the main artist within our music video and also make them look like an everyday person. I believe this will be good as it is something different within the rap music industry as this would be original as not a lot of rap music videos involve a normal everyday looking person as usually they are dressed in baggy items of clothing and often hats.


Though the process of our questionnaires we have chosen too target the age range of 17- 20 to achieve the highest amount of success for the music video. Through our questionnaires we have also decided to work with mainstream rap as this was what was rated upon higher out of mainstream rap and alternative rap as this will reach our target audience better than alternative rap. As a group we have also made some decisions based on the results from the questionnaire  as due to more people selecting the first layout of the options that we have chosen we will be making our magazine design by using a similar layout to meet the layout that was selected to meet the requirements for our target audience. 

Initial Ideas

What ideas have my group had for our music video?
As a group we have spoke about creating a mainstream rap music video instead of an alternative one due to the large success of mainstream rap and we believe this would be easier to maintain and create due to the clear codes and conventions of rap music videos within the music industry.

What genre have we selected?
The genre which my group have selected is Rap, we chose this because we believed that we could make a successful rap music video because of our interest in the rap genre.

What type of rap do we want to create?
We wish to create a mainstream rap music video as we believe we would perform better creating a mainstream rap video instead of alternative rap.

What location would be best for filming the music video?
Riverside Park in Southampton would be a good place to film our rap music video as it is a quiet area which would be a good area to create our music video.

What style of video do we wish to create?
My group want to create a mainstream rap video which fits in with the current artists Eminem and Snoop Dogg due to the large success which they have had.

What music label would you go with?
I would go with Eminem's music label 'Shady' as he is a well-known hit artist within the music industry and is recognised worldwide which could provide a lot of benefits.