Media studies Music video analysis

PURPLE SWAG

“PURPLE SWAG” Directed by Jason Ano, Co-directed by Asap rocky produced in 2011. Hip-Hop genre.

The video opens with credits “Purple swag” which are transparent. Behind the credits is a close-up of girls face smiling; her mouth is framed by the transparent credit spelling ‘Purple’ with a purple colour filter. Shortly after we have full view of the girl and the shot is cut to a meat shot of ASAP lip-synching. The video orientates around the idea of being intoxicated, the use of shifting focus in and out of meat shots helps create the concept of intoxication for viewer.

Purple swag is mainly a performance video with lots of meat shots of star and group lip-synching lyrics in long shots. However the video doesn’t seem to have much of a narrative at all with no story line and what seems to be simply a group of people ‘hanging out’. The video doesn’t fluently cut to the beat but does so effectively at points e.g. jumping from main artist to close up of girl lip-synching the artists voice on the beat.

In the background of many shots mise-en-scene such as drinking and smoking paraphernalia is scattered around carelessly helping to reinforce the idea of a party/ gathering, backed with various colour filters (purple/magenta) and intricate close up focus pulls on paraphernalia giving use the pov of an intoxicated person. This pulls the viewer into the Lifestyle or experience the artist implies he’s having.

Overall the video successfully portrait’s a relation between lyrics and visuals. It also entertanis the audience with an unorthodox performance from artist with the use of lip-synching timed to unrelated characters in video.

note: meat shot....