Kanye West's "Stronger" music video uses visual elements and cinematography techniques to convey themes of confidence and motivation. The video contrasts expensive, polished visual effects with grittier, amateur footage to represent Kanye's rise to fame and financial success. It features a female character intended to attract viewers, and depicts Kanye displaying stereotypical male hip-hop traits like arrogance through his clothing, lyrics, and fluid movements. The narrative elements show Kanye being created by a machine and suffering in a hospital to symbolize how difficulties have made him stronger, matching the song's lyrics.

1. Music Video Analysis
Kanye West – Stronger
*This is a video analysis from the hip hop / rap genre to analyse a video from a different
genre to the one I am doing and to see if I can apply any of it to my music video.
Gender - Female
There is a female in this video who is clearly there to
visually entertain the viewers with her good looks.
This is done often in music videos because it gets
people to the video and sticking around once it is on.
As far as I can tell she hasn’t got any part in the
narrative part of the song she is just there for the
reasons I previously explained. I could but won’t be
applying this my video because it isn’t the correct
genre. Hip hop uses this quite a lot, rock doesn’t so much.
Gender – Male
Kanye West himself does follow some stereotypes we often link to the male gender. These
traits mainly come with the arrogance and self-belief. This comes in the clothing, the body
language and the lyrics. Kanye West dances in the video and has a very fluid, instinctive
body movements. This shows his confidence in front of the camera, performing his song.
The lyrics portray quite a lot of arrogance:
“Bow in the presence of greatness
You should be honoured by my lateness
That I would even show up to this fake s**t
So, go ahead, go nuts, go apes**t”
Saying people should be honoured by your lateness implies you think you’re untouchable in
the way that you are above others. This is very typical of the hip-hop genre. The Rock genre
definitely has matched arrogance, Oasis are one of the most arrogant musicians of all time,
but hip-hop is much blunter about this, especially in the lyrics.
Visual Codes

2. Kanye West is dressed in expensive clothing and has
a nice-looking pair of sunglasses on. This is done
because Kanye wants to look cool. He doesn’t want
people looking at him in the same way that the
singer from the rock videos want to be seen. They
want to be seen normal people, on a par with the
audience. Kanye West doesn’t want that in my
opinion. He wants people to look up to him and see
a successful talented person. Motivations is a big
difference I have found between the two genres I have looked at.
This music video is clearly quite expensive
with all the visual effects in the video. This is
part of the narrative in the video. Obviously,
this is something I cannot add to my music
video. It shows the big difference in
motivations between the ‘rock’ genre, and
the ‘hip hop’ genre. The ‘Rock’ genre
appreciated the realistic, gritty feel the
natural visuals provided. This music video
wanted the expensive, movie-like visuals.
There is a juxtaposition between the visual work. During the narrative part of the video, as I
said, the visuals are clearly expensive but the performance of Kanye West has handheld
footage which has clearly been edited to look choppier and poorly produced in general.
Often the screen will freeze and skip which is obviously intentional. I think this more
amateur part of the video is to signify how far Kanye West has come financially and in
general status. The song ‘stronger’ has motivational lyrics so a motivational story arc makes
sense.
There are a few close-up shots during the video where the post-production editing team
have added flames around Kanye West. The term ‘he’s on fire’ is often used when a
performer of something is at the top of his/her game. In their peak. This is the idea Kanye is
trying to get across. He’s generally a confident and quite arrogant individual who has lots of
self-belief so the flames almost definitely are implying he’s very proud and confident in his
work and the song in particular.
The editing of the video very much reflects the high tempo of the song. This is done because
it helps to absorb the viewer into the video better and gives the video a more professional
and suitable feel to it. There is also dancing which fits the tempo of the song, there isn’t too
much of it but it’s there to show what type of music video is (hip-hop) which does often
show dancing and can entertain the viewer watching the video too.
Location

3. The location during the performance part of the video takes place in two locations, one
being in front of a plain wall, the other being in front of a green screen with effects in the
background. The location of the wall really feeds into what I said on the location part during
visual effects. This is done to show how far Kanye West has risen in fame. The wall shows
where he came from. The green screen provides Kanye with the flames which show the very
blunt arrogance in the music video, to match the arrogant lyrics.
The narrative involves lots of post-production editing. The narrative involves Kanye West
going through a machine. This machine appears to be creating him. This would make sense
as it would support the arrogant lyrics Kanye West has earlier in the song. He believes he is
something more than human, something greater. Machines are obviously created so they
do not make the mistakes a human does, so Kanye showing himself being made and
designed shows he really thinks a lot of good about himself.
One of the locations is in hospital. Kanye West himself is the patient, in a hospital bed,
crying. A hospital is a bad place for people to be and something they often need to recover
from mentally and/or physically from when
leaving. The song is called ‘stronger’ and does
include some motivational lyrics so the hard-
hitting visuals might connect to some people
“N-now th-that that don't kill me
Can only make me stronger”
The visuals back this up because in the hospital
location he is shown to be suffering with his
crying. He is then saying in the lyrics this will
make him mentally stronger.
The narrative aspect of the video was shot in Japan, lots being on the road, in the City of
Tokyo. I don’t think there is any significance to it in the context of music video analysis.
Cinematography
In the music video, there is a lot of video of close-
ups of Kanye West during his performance part of
the video. A close-up is used for a few reasons.
Kanye West is by far the most important part of this
video, he is the singer, so getting different shots of
him is important as he is in the video a lot. The
close-up gives you Kanye West in total isolation
from everything else. The narrative for a short time
becomes irrelevant, his cloths become and other
visual codes become irrelevant and it’s just about him and his performance. This is great for
Kanye as ultimately; the music video is promotion for him and his song but also, it’s a nice
shot for the viewing fans because Kanye West is the main event. He’s likely why they are
there.

4. Sticking with the performance aspect of Kanye West there is a couple wide shots / long
shots. These shots provide context to a shot. In both it shows you the cloths Kanye West is
wearing and it shows the wall. Both have significant impacts on the video.
In the second wide shot it is a really long shot. The first picture I showed, the focus is still on
Kanye, in the picture below the focus is completely taken from Kanye West and replaced
with the room he stands in. This is a technique that I could use in my own music video.
During the narrative part of this music video we see Kanye West in his hospital bed like I
previously mentioned, he is in a lot of pain. We have a crane shot / birds eye shot. This gives
the audience the feeling of a higher power, maybe a God like presence looking down on
him.