Research - Kendrick Lamar - Swimming Pools - Hip-Hop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-ejyHzz3XE


The video starts out with a stationary camera, birds eye view, establishing shot showing the main vocalist descending into darkness, it starts out as a extreme close up to show the audience his facial expressions but turns into a medium shot to show the black, nothingness he's falling into. The camera quickly cuts to an extreme long shot of a side view to give the audience a side perspective of the abyss he's falling into. The video quickly changes and shows bottles travelling in a different direction to the direction of Kendrick and smashing on a surface. This scene may have been done to show the contrast between alcohol and Kendrick as they are travelling in different directions and have opposite background (White & Black), or simply may have been done to make something look memorising in slow motion, that in normal motion wouldn't.

Throughout the video, there are scenes of an attractive women dancing in tight and revealing clothes, which is a code and convention of the Hip-Hop genre, because it attracts a male audience, makes people watch the video more than once or makes the artist look egotistical.




There is a scene where Kendrick is in a dark, run down building which uses natural lighting to make the scene look more serious and uses the lighting to focus in on the artist and important items. During this scene there are cuts between him and photos, these photos and the building may be something related to the lyrics and building - which makes the video and lyrics personal to the artist, which makes it more appealing to the audience as they may be able to relate to the lyrics. The tempo of the video is quite slow, allowing the audience to focus in on the lyrics and relate to them, this slow tempo compliments the slow motion editing throughout the video and portrays a chilled and relaxed atmosphere and life that a Hip-Hop artist may live.

Another code and convention of a Hip-Hop video is a to have scenes of people dancing to the song in a house or club and this is seen in this video. This is done to show a clubbing scenario to the audience which makes them want to go out to a club and experience it  themselves, much like when a band shows them performing live in a video, which in turn may make them want to go buy the song to re-enact their experiences.

The topic of the story is about alcohol, because of this the video is mainly concept but has parts of narrative and performance as there is a small story to the video and there is scenes of the rappers performing and directing their lyrics at the audience.