This document discusses how the media product uses and develops conventions of real hip-hop/rap media. It provides examples from the music video, digital album cover, and magazine advertisement. Key conventions used include dancing, the artist rapping to camera, outfits displaying "bling," changing locations, and maintaining an urban aesthetic throughout. Some conventions were challenged, such as not focusing on displays of wealth or surrounding the artist with others.

1. Q1 : IN WHAT WAYS DOES
YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT
USE, DEVELOP OR
CHALLENGE FORMS AND
CONVENTIONS OF REAL
MEDIA PRODUCTS?
Task: Select 10 stills/ images from your Music Video and the 2 ancillary tasks. Annotate each one of them in Photoshop or Powerpoint to
indicate which conventions you have used at which point.
Help: The question is asking you to compare the genre conventions you used in your 3 tasks to those used in real music videos/ digipaks
and magazine adverts. Each of the slides you select should illustrate your use of a particular convention e.g. Your female pop video
might include a close-up direct address to camera or your digipak might include a particular motif that connects it to the video and the
magazine advert.

2. The first convention we have used of Hip-Hop/ Rap is a dance sequence, some
music videos have a dance routine in a part of the song which contains a
instrumental (Which is what we have done) or just with the lyrics. A member of the
group choreographed a dance routine the song so it would sync, she choreographed
a street dance routine so it would go with our song. In some video's it would have the
artist doing the routine, but for ours we decided not to, and to have him doing Urban
something on his own, so that would go against some conventions of a Hip-Hop
music video. Location
Dance
Routine

3. The second convention we have used of Hip-Hop/Rap is the star rapping in front of
the camera with a mid shot, In a lot of Hip-Hop/Rap music videos the star is usually
shown facing the camera staring directly in front, this helps show his dominance and
attitude, as rappers usually like to be shown as powerful and intimidating. We use
shot's like this throughout, it helps show the star's emotions, he doesn't show any
anger as it's quite an upbeat and chill song, so our star's attitude compliments the
song.
Eye Contact
(Voyeurism)

4. Big entrances, some Hip-Hop/Rap music videos have big entrances for the star, or have
the video start of with a shot of the star, which is the convention we have decided to
follow, but also have the big entrance with the text popping out of the ground, it gives
him an introduction. It also sets the street/urban scene we are trying to create with him
wandering across the car park
Introduction of the
urban/street setting
Introduction of the
star.
Special Effects- 3D
text popping out of
the ground.

5. followed this throughout, it gives the star character, and they like to show off with
the clothes they are wearing. We have dressed our star with a 'bling' flat peak,
which follows the convention of bling and jewelry, as the hat has a gold glittery
crown on the front and back. Next he was wearing a hoody which gives of the
street/hip-hop feel to the video, it is also the norm in a lot of videos, either with the
hood up or tied up like in the picture. Next we had our star wearing
bright noticeable trainers, to help him stand out, but also to follow the clothing
convention. It gives our star an identity, a way people can recognize him because
of what he is wearing.
Green Bling FlatPeak
Bright Blue Nikes

6. ENERGETIC BEHAVIOR, A LOT OF RAP/HIP-HOP VIDEOS SHOW A LOT OF MOVEMENT
AND ENERGY FROM THE STAR. THIS IS A CONVENTION WE HAVE IMPLEMENTED INTO
OUR VIDEO. AS HE RAPS HE DOES LITTLE MOVES WHICH GO WITH THE LYRICS, LIKE
IN THE PHOTO HE SAYS SQUARE AND HE CREATES A SQUARE MOTION WITH HIS
HANDS. I THINK IT’S IMPORTANT FOR OUR ARTIST TO BE ENERGETIC AS IT GOES
WITH THE SONG, THE MUSIC IS QUITE CHILL AND CONTAINS SOME BEATS, SO IT
WORKS WHEN HE POPS ON THE BEAT, IF HE DIDN’T MOVE OR SHOW ANY ENERGY IT
WOULDN’T LOOK GOOD.
Hand Movements

7. THERE IS A LOT OF FOCUS ON WHAT OUR STAR WEARS, FROM THE
SCREENSHOT BELOW WE CAN SEE THERE IS SOME FOCUS ON THE STARS
SHOES, IT HELPS CREATE AN IDENTITY AND FOLLOWS THE CONVENTIONS OF
HIP-HOP/RAP VIDEOS, WHERE THE MATERIALS/ASSETS OF THE STAR ARE
SHOWN THROUGHOUT, CARS, BLING ETC. THESE ITEMS, ARE USED TO SHOW
SUCCESS, STYLE AND TO CREATE A REPUTATION. I THINK WE ARE ALSO GOING
AGAINST THIS CONVENTION, AS WE DO NOT SHOW, HIS SPORTS CARS, HUGE
HOUSE, LOTS OF MONEY AND BLING, I THINK OUR STAR IS A BIT MORE LAID
BACK THAN USUAL RAP ARTISTS.

8. Showing the stars skills. Not only does our star thing he dances, which follows
some conventions of Hip-hop/rap, a lot of artists are shown doing the
choreography with the other dancers, but we slightly went against this convention,
because pretty much through the video our star is on his own. Also the style of
dance that our star does is Breakdancing, which goes with our urban/street
approach, it also gives our artist an identity again
Breakdancing
(AppleJacks)

9. A convention we have gone against which is regularly used in hip-hop/rap videos is parties
and surrounded by girls. We could of easily gone with this convention seeing that the song
is called “My House” Which could of lead to multiple different routes, but we decided to go
against the norm and try something different. Throughout the video our star is pretty much
by himself.

10. Location changes, changing the locations keeps the music video feeling fresh and
moving, if we had our star standing in the same place and position throughout it wouldn’t
be very interesting. This is a common convention for any music video. Not just hip-
hop/rap. We still kept the location with the street/urban feel, so the location below is a
shopping center.

11. Maintaining the urban/street feel throughout. As I’ve mentioned throughout, we had little
references to go with the hip-hop/rap convention. In every screen grab there are hints
towards this, from the stairwell, to the dancing and finally ending in a car park again, we
created a circle, even though it wasn’t linear. We started at a car park and have ended in
a car park. Keeping this look throughout helped us maintain the genre and to recreate it a
little by also going against conventions.

12. For the advert we wanted something which went with the title of the album, we also didn't want to have the advert
and album to contain the same pictures, we wanted them to be more unique. I believe the advert went with the
conventions of hip-hop/rap, If you saw it in a magazine and didn’t know anything about it you would know it’s hip-
hop genre from just looking at it. What helps the most is probably the font, as it’s a font we downloaded from the
internet, it has building cutouts, to create the urban jungle feel. We also kept it simplistic, which is similar to what
Jay Z has done with one of his magazine adverts, We didn’t want it packed with reviews etc, the simpler the better.

13. Similar to the advert, we wanted to use photos which we didn’t include anywhere else to keep it different, originally we were going to have the
same photos for the advert, but decided otherwise for the above reason. I believe our album cover goes with the main convention we are
trying to portray which is the street/urban feel, for many reasons, firstly what our artist is wearing is very urban, with the beanie and hoody,
next is the tattoos, although tattoos used to be linked with rock, nowadays a lot of rapstars have full arm tattoos similar to our star. One thing
we did use from our advert was the font, that’s something we wanted to keep consistent so it could be related to our star whenever it was
used. We decided to use the tattoos more, so we used them to fill up the spaces around the artist on the back.
Taking influence from another
rappers deluxe album I decided
to create some bonus photos
which would be given free with
the album shown below. I
wanted to artist to feel personal
with the fans, which is why we
also included a letter to them in
the album.
BONUS PHOTOS