I have chosen to analyse a video called 'Cold as ice' - M.O.P and another video called 'Baby' - Justin Bieber. M.O.P are a duo composed of Billy Danze and Lil' Fame from New York. They are involved in the Hip-Hop genre of music. The duo are famously known for their agressive delivery of music and lyrics which tends to be a regular occurance within the Hip-Hop genre. Justin Bieber is a young, pop / RnB artist from Canda. Justin was discovered on Youtube in 2008. He tends to follow the Pop genre within music, which has characteristics of light and fun living.
Mise en scene is French and tends to mean, the placing of the stage, I.e. what is in the frame. It involves everything that is in the frame such as lighting, actors, costume and make-up, staging of objects, props, compositions and staging of actors. For some, Mise en scene can involve the emotional meaning of the frame, or the elements of visual style.
In Hip-Hop there tends to be a typical Mise en scene of dark, possibly threatening lighting. This is evident in M.O.P’s ‘Cold as ice’ where the lighting is very low to encourage you to be intrigued about the content of the video. However, in Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby’ the lighting is incredibly bright, the complete opposite to a Hip-Hop video. He is surrounded by a strip of lights in the street and the colour scheme of the video is light blue unlike M.O.P’s theme of black. In the studio scenes, the lighting appears slightly darker to ‘set a scene’, however, it is still significantly lighter than M.O.P’s choice of lighting. This helps the audience decide whether the video is going to involve a positive atmosphere or negative.
Within Hip-Hop, the actors tend to look very aggressive and intimidating and any actresses, if not the artist, tend to be sexually provocative to promote notions of looking. They tend to have little amount of clothing and dance sexually towards the audience or the actor involved in the scene, just like in M.O.P’s video. All the woman are wearing tight clothing to expose various parts of their body for the camera. For costume, the males tend to have low riding trousers exposing their underwear. They may also be wearing vests or t-shirts with flat cap hats, all of dark colour. This is to display an image that ‘doesn’t care’ about anyone’s opinions. The artists may also be wearing expensive jewellery.
For example in M.O.P’s video, both artists are wearing dark, heavy clothes with flat caps and tight black hats. This all black image, gives us the audience, a feeling that these may not be the most approachable men. The women in the video are wearing fur coats to cause controversy and not much else, whereas in Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby’, himself and all the actors and actresses are all dressed in incredibly bright clothing that suggests a youthful element to the video. The colours clash and are slightly harsh on the eyes as the colours pop, but it is clear that the point of the video is to make the audience feel happy afterwards instead of any aggression.
In many hip-hop videos, there are reoccurring props of expensive alcohols such as champagne, potential drugs to display rebelling, dice for gambling with, or expensive vehicles. In M.O.P’s video, there is the reoccurring image of ice to fit in with the music title ‘Cold as ice’. There aren’t many props in the video apart from chains hanging from the ceiling and expensive cars. This helps the audience focus more on the aggressive lyrics that the rappers are spitting at them. In ‘Baby’, props include bright lights, guitars, bowling balls and pins to suggest a playful element.
Most pop videos have a playful element, unlike Hip-hop videos which play on the aggression and anger of the actors towards the audience.
The shots in Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby’ tend to be wide shots that focus on the party scenes of the video showing teens dancing and singing at a bowling alley, clearly having fun. The only Close Up shots are of Justin Bieber and his ‘love’ to expose the emotions they feel towards each other, helping the audience piece together the narrative. The shots are similar in a hip hop video to pop, like M.O.P. However, although the shots are similar, the music artists display completely different emotions. M.O.P display anger and threatening behaviour in comparison to a light hearted love scenes with Bieber.
The effects in M.O.P’s video are abrupt and quick. The shots that transcend slowly involve the female dancers; this adds a mix of sexual content that switches quickly back to the angry cuts of the rap artists. In Justin Bieber’s video, the transitions of the shots are much slower and drawn out, to add to the effect of yearning for someone and being sad in love. This is the complete opposite to the ‘Cold as ice’ video.
Also, the tempos of music are very differentiated. In hip-hop, the music is well known to be quite slow but have a heavy baseline that accentuates the rap lyrics- like ‘Cold as ice’. The lyrics for M.O.P are slow and very pronounced so that the audience are fully aware at what the artist is saying. However, in pop it tends to be the complete opposite. For example, Justin bieber’s video is extremely upbeat even though it is displaying lyrics of upset and sadness, the tempo still keeps the rhythm upbeat.
In conclusion, from the two videos I’ve displayed on the blog, it is clear to see that both the videos are very opposite. The lighting, costumes, lyrics, tempo of music and effects all contribute towards the different type of genre. M.O.P’s track ‘Cold as ice’ comes across as very aggressive and agitated, whereas Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby’ is very positive and up-beat even though he is singing about something that is troubling him. Whilst analysing these videos, it helped me categorise the types of music video a particular genre may have.
