Tropes of music videos of different genres

In today's lesson we studied 3 different types of music video genre - rap, dance and indie - and discussed the different tropes common to each, discovering them to be very different to each other.

Rap - Dr Dre 'Still Dre'

• Lots of half-naked girls clearly put into the video for sexual content (camera angles focus especially on their boobs and bums).
• There tend to be lots of cars which the artists sit in and cruise round the neighbourhood in.
• The artists tend to wear baggy tops with lots of "bling".
• There is a lot of partying going on.
• The artist has a large entourage/gang.
• The video is quite threatening and "in-your-face".
• The video is much more masculine than those of other genres.
• There are certain arm gestures/movements that the rappers always do in videos.
• The video has very high production values and would have been very expensive to make.
• There is a very serious feel to it.

Dance - Calvin Harris 'Ready For The Weekend'

• Very colourful
• Women in leotards and exercise wear rather than the string bikinis you would find them in, in rap videos. This tends to make it a bit less obviously sexual.
• There tend to be a lot of images of records, which reflects the disco origin.
• Light, simple feel.
• There is the idea of going into another world.
• Much more feminine than in videos of genres such as rap.

Indie - The Kooks 'Naive' and 'She Moves In Her Own Way'

• The artist always looks/seems to be hungover and quite scruffy looking, as if they don't care about their appearance.
• The artist often seems to be wandering around aimlessly with nothing really to do.
• The artist usually seems quite depressed or not very happy and is looking for a way to escape from their usual life.
• There is an impression of self abuse in terms of the artists not looking after their bodies and consuming far too much alcohol.
• There is a "don't care" kind of attitude.
• The videos always seem to be quite cool and chilled out, despite their depressing kind of vibe.
• The videos are usually made on a much lower budget than typical pop or rap videos.
• There tends to be lots of hand-held, shaky camera work which makes the video a lot less focused than you would expect.