Music Video Analysis: Kanye West - Good Life (Ft. T-Pain)

The bright and exciting music video potrays the fun and happiness you can have when you are rich hence the 'good life'. This video  features Kanye West and T-Pain performing with animated backdrops and literally mouthing the words of the song lyrics, which show up in large letters and numbers. It uses special effects to draw attention to the audience as the backdrops constantly changes an entices the watcher. This music video won best special effects in the MTV VMA awards, so this is why I decided to pick this video to look at why it makes it so great.

This music video blends the animation and the rappers seamlessly so there isn't a point in the video where it seems out of place or overused. By looking at this at a different perspective, the white backdrop acts as a plain canvas. From here, its almost as if someone is drawing around the rappers like an artist. This is first shown in this shot here:

Colourful lines are drawn around the

 rapper

'Good Life' is drawn behind the rapper

 These two shots show the creative side to the video; the colorful lines run up him to add more effect. This shot is effective because the rapper is in 'grayscale' meaning that he has no colour to him. This contrasts with the colour lines and writting and shows that he has been injected with life. Also his body orientation shows that he is very confident because he is standing there quite calmly with his head held high to show his authority. Another shot which reinforces the authority is the shot shown here :

Kanye West 'throwing hands up'

                   

In this shot, Kanye West has his hands up to the lyrics 'now throw your hands up to the sky' This reinforces the strerotype that rappers have a lot of power. This is shown by the 'clip art' hands being thrown up towards him. What I found quite interesting was the fact that the hands were from all racial backgrounds. This shows what kind of multicultural society we are living in today. Also notice that in this shot, there is a 'random' leg which is thrown up along with the hands. 

The underlying meaning to this is that it reinforces the stereotype that rappers have a lot of power over women. In less subtle terms, Kanye West is so powerful that women throw their legs up at him because they want him. This is again shown by the somewhat 'random' clip art images of a model in the background a split second after. Finally, there are a few hands which are thrown up in the infamous triangle pose. This is Kanye West's and other assoicates (Such as Jay-Z for example) trademark pose. This pose again imposes power as the triangle pose has become associated with the rapper.

This video has a number of very creative effects and features to it. I have picked out a few of them and anaylsed the purpose of them, and how they would appeal to the audience.

This shot is one of the best transitions in the music video. It features a crane shot of Kanye West rapping to the camera then the white canvaas goes from white to black.

Transitions from white canvas to black canvas

 This shot plays paticulary well because it is a very smooth transition and from the white canvas to the black canvas, it opens up new creative ideas which the video fulfills. Firstly, The different font writing is 'drawn' on the floor. Ive also noticed that most of the words in the floor are one syllable words like 'pow' and 'looks' and 'style'. From there, the words get 'brushed over' with black paint as it starts to fill the floor. From this point the rest of the video has a black canvas where they display new effects and features to display their lyrics.

'Colour glasses'

In this shot it displays Kanye West with glasses which appear to be animated. At this moment in time he says 'Where we like them girls who ain't on tv cause they got more ass than the models' This again shows the rapper-women phenomenon in which it looks like Kanye West is staring at a womens bottom. This stereotypically shows the respect rappers have for women; they look at them like they are a piece of meat.

'Colour screen'

In this shot, Kanye West and T-Pain have what it appears to be a 'colour screen' in which they put this over their heads and their face, hands and clothing change colour. You can see by the expression on their faces that they are having fun; this emphasises the meaning of the song and video, that they are happy and enjoying life.

Overall, I think that this music video is very effective in terms of utilising special effects; this video is easy on the eye. There isn't anything too complicated to it, its just a very vibarant, colourful video which appeals to its audience because the video goes so well with the song. It shows how fun, happy and wonderful the 'good life' can be.