Kanye West-Touch the sky- Chris Milk, Director (2007)

In this video Kanye with his lyrics is describing himself and being quite arrogant, he is exaggerating his star persona by acting as Evil Kanevil and this is Goodwin's theory of being intertextual. This adds to Kanye’s ego. Milk has made him refer to himself as ‘Kanyevil’ just to let you know if you hadn’t worked out he was trying to be Kanevil. Straight off even though the video has been shot in the 21st century, Milk has gave it a 70’s look about it and adjusted the colour and made it a lot brighter and more of a sepia feel. The theory of it being the 70’s is backed up when Kanye mentions President Nixon who was in power in the early 70’s. To back up Kanye’s status on the music scene he has managed to get a cameo from Pamela Anderson. This video is about Kanye West alter ego and although he’s playing a different character Chris Milk has made the scenario and the concept near enough the same, everything is being revolved around Kanye and the focus is on him. The peculiar thing in this video is that there is some miming from Kanye west so it tell me that he is still wanting to be the main man so people don’t forget he’s a hip hop artist. He has a fellow rapper performing in the video as a entertainer and a warm up act for Kanyevil’s dare devil stunt. With the opening lyrics when it says ‘looking extra fly’ there is a still mid shot of Kanye west, him thinking a lot of himself, there are many direct links between lyrics and visuals. Another one is when Kanye says ‘for the day I die’ there is a close up of his rocket, presuming us that that is how he will eventually die. There is an iconic visual style in this video that has formed a blue print for hip hop videos. I like what Chris Milk has done in this video, it’s original and he has steered away form the traditional hip hop video of , girls half naked, cars and mansions. It’s defying the stereotypical hip-hop video.

Jay Z-Death of Auto tune- Anthony Mandler (2009)

In this video Jay Z, like Kanye west has not gone down the typical hip-hop video path. Perhaps the old Jay – z would have had lots of girls on yought etc but in this video he is being very mature and it’s and insight to his life, it has no real meaning or storyline but it’s like a day in the life old Jay Z and I think Mandler does this very well. Now although the first shot is of a Bentley it is really old and something you would see a mob in. You instantly know who is going to get out of the car and when he has a security to open the door for him he shows us his status of being the biggest hip-hop star in the world. The video is emphasising that in spades. I like this video because it is very honest and Jay z in a lot fo the shots is trying to be like someone from a Italian mob sort of thing, someone from godfather. With the game of poker in the back of the restaurant it makes him look really soprano esc. He makes another reference to him being rich when someone tries ot bet with a 5 dollar and he laughs at them saying you can’t play with that. I think unusually his persona is bought out most when he is just rapping into the camera in the abandoned warehouse room, the shooting of the camera there is excellent because a lot of the time it’s one long shot and Mandler doesn’t need to use any fancying editing he just gets Jay Z to rap down the camera then occasionally look away, this show this authority and huge stage presence. Another case of this is when he is performing in that big room with his band acoustically, he struts around the stage even though know one is watching. Then you can see Jay z star persona because he has a cameo from NBA superstar LeBron James. There is no lyrics that link with any visuals but the presence of Jay Z is enough you just find yourself in ore of him. One of my favourite parts in this video is when Jay Z first walks into the room and he turns on the lights, it’s just give you a sense of something big is going ot happen.

Ok Go-Here it goes again- Trish sie (2006)

This is one of my favourite videos of all time along with lots of other people, its originality has made it a huge hit on youtube and around the world and this has led it to frequently get mentions in songs. This is a conventionally choreographed dance routine produced and directed by Trish sie. This is a very low budget video and they have done so well with the fund that they had, the mise en scene is just six treadmills. The song goes really well with the video and although none of the lyrics make sense with the visuals the actual tune links very well and I like how they don’t mime at all because they know it wouldn’t really work. Plus it would be very hard to multi task. There is literally no camera editing in this video and just one shot for three minutes and five seconds. Although it is quite hard to talk about it I though I best speak about it because the video is iconic. You can tell this took one take because there are a few slip ups which are quite obvious but it doesn’t matter it gives it more feeling and originality. The style of this band is very apparent because they dress stylishly but also a bit like geeks so it makes the video even more entertaining. Watching this video gives me hope that I can actually make a great video with literally no budget, Sie has got a amazing imagination to think outside the box and I just need to do the same.