SONG: [Mischief x 67 Dimzy - Illegal 2]

A2 COURSEWORK MUSIC VIDEO DECONSTRUCTION.

• The opening shot is a mid shot of the artist performing the song, while performing gang related hand gestures. This is stereotypical mise en scene for a grime genre as visuals are predominantly are almost ‘amateur’ as it’s close to the reality and backgrounds of the people who are involved in the genre.

• The camera pans quickly back and fourth and moves quickly zooming in and out to create a fast paced scene and feel to the song, but also to make the video more interesting as grime generically has low budget videos and no narrative.

Both of these shots are both shot in the same location, this first shot is a close up of a gang member with his face covered with a jumper; this both symbolises how ‘street’ the grime genre is and not ‘professional’.

The second shot’s mise en scene shows 5 young males with covered faces – emphasizing the effect of the first shot, that the people featured are involved in street deviance. The composition of the shot also shows that the shot almost isn’t focused on the men, but on the scenery behind;

• The shot on the left is a member of 67 who’s composed to be relatively small in comparison to the rest of the shot; this is found in a lot of grime music videos including Illegal 2 [The song being deconstructed] indicating that a young black male is very small and powerless in society. in a lot of the shot is focused on the location [street estates in London more than likely situated with working class people]. This is symbolizing the heart of grime and where it started in East London; not a very poor place but very much working class and as this shot shows very basic lifestyle.

• This idea of ‘basic’ is displayed through grime videos by the concept of grime videos being amateur and basic – stereotypically no expensive cars, no expensive apartments in big cities, just a lot of performance by the artist in ‘working class urban streets. The second screenshot is from the same shot, and is a ‘negative’ effect. The effect only lasts for about half a second, however this is break makes the video more interesting to watch, instead of just someone performing on screen for three minutes. This is one of the most basic effects, it’s so basic that it’s found on most mobile phones as a filter and normally composed by the click of a button, this further emphasizes how minimalistic grime is by the use off editing being very cheap and standard, however still professionally looking.

• This shot is further on in the music video but however is the same as the previous two, however mise en scene sows that the colours have been adjusted. The composition and sot type are all the same, however the mise en scene shows that the whole sequence is red white and blue. These are the three colours of the Union Jack; symbolizing the British heritage of grime – this is key iconography for grime as for a lot of genres the music videos are taken all over the world to create a good visual or narrative, however grime stereotypically has always stayed in UK, specifically places like London, Birmingham and Manchester.

VOYEURISM.• Grime has always been closely linked with the hip-hop and rap genre [which in terms of

the tempo of the song and some of he lyrics it’s not massively dissimilar], however one key convention in hip hop videos is excessive use of voyeurism:

[Left: video by A$AP Rocky][Right: video by Kid Ink and Chris brown]Both from the hip hop and rap genre that shows women as a sense of status; the more you have the better respected you are, and the female body is also exploited in a provocative way, which isn’t seen in grime videos [as seen below].

Contrasted with the two hip hop videos, Illegal 2 [as well as a lot of grime] doesn’t exploit the female body and fantasize about them as objects. Females are seen more as “part of the mandem” which is a phrase known by this genre as basically ‘one of the gang’, as seen in the screenshot from Illegal 2 she is appropriately dressed with male members of the gang.