Music Video Analysis: Kid Cudi - Make Her Say (Ft. Kanye West & Common)

Media conventions and representations

Kid Cudi's music video constructs a artistic, visual image of the song; it cleverly builds up different perspectives by using a symetrical format to ilustrate the overall mood and feel to it.

Symetrical image of bloons

Firstly the video starts off with a smyetrical image of floating bloons. Throughout the video you get colourful, uplifting moving images which express and match the feel of the song. This video uses a vocal sample from the song "Lady Gaga - Pokerface" The video carries a minimal aesthetic; A lot of the scenes were shot in open and wide places. The artists included in the video; Kid Cudi, Kanye West, and Common all appear to have been in the shoot, however they were all in different locations at the time. This made me think more about my music video as I don't necessarily have to have everyone there at the same time. The music video enforces a split screen effect to create the illusion that the three artists were all filmed in the same location.

I think the overall theme this video is trying to produce is quite vibrant; this can be shown in the choice of colours and the slight film grain quality used to boost the colouful feel to the song. Also there are various perculiar shots for example an upside down shot shown here:

Upside down shot of car shown above; Front view of car driving below

When first watching this I noticed that the video is quite abstract compared to the song and didnt relate as much. After watching it a number of times I picked up underlaying factors which demostrate a stereotypical hip-hop video but in a more subtle way. Firstly behind all of the rappers there are females displayed which each of them, whether that be behind or above the rapper to show that they are more enforcing and powerful for example:

Rapper at the top of the screen; Female at the bottom

 

Rapper in forefront; Female in background

So you could argue and say that they still do follow a few of the stereotypes of hip-hop music videos but in a much more subtle way. Furthermore a variety of wide camera shots are used which blend into the split screen effect and this is reinforced by the shots changing few seconds to the tempo of the song. In addition this video was one of the first to advertise "DJ Hero Hardware" and advertising products and names are seen in many music videos today.

Audience

Overall I think that this video is quite effective in terms of translating the song to video; The splitscreen effect is very diverse and goes with the audio. The video uses a variety of visual images and wide camera angles to illustrate the lyrics. However, the shots have hidden conventions and meanings which might not be seen by the audience on first viewing. The video vaguely uses the conventions of hip-hop videos; however I think some audiences will appreiciate how different and diverse this music video is when compared to the hip-hop music videos of today.