Analysis of The Game It's Okay (One Blood) ft. Junior Reid

Narrative:

In The Games video ‘It's Okay (One Blood) ft. Junior Reid’ we see a kind of linear structure to the narrative. The Game and junior Reid do not meet in the music video but they go in some sort of order whilst they are singing from The Game coming from his house and getting ready to meeting up with his crew and walking down the road to Junior Reid first standing on top of a roof to finally ending up beside a house. This video is how a typical rap/hip hop video looks, because the narrators and participants in the video are The Game and Junior Reid because there is very little acting rather just lip syncing to the song but they are also participants because The Game shows a little bit of a story by him meeting up with his crew and basically showing the audience how his day is on the day to day basis is in the video.

Genre:

The Game comes from a gang related background and grew up on mainly hip hop and gangster rap, which he decided to take up. The Game's main genre is hip hop an gangster rap but in this video he seems to turn less conventional as many rappers do to rather more in depth about his roots of rapping by showing the audience multiple gang tattoo's not only of himself but on other gang members bodies and heads. The Game I feel in this video has a rather hip hop beat but rapers flow over the top of it showing a wider understanding and demonstration of his musical attributes.

Media Language:

Editing

The editing in this video shows a lot of different cuts from fast editing of the cuts to match up with the tempo of the beat to no continuity editing involved, because the director is try to show a vast amount of shots all to do with the gang culture but has not enough time to show each step of how The game and Junior Reid get to each step also there are a lot of jump cuts and some match cuts within the jump cuts. This is like how a typical hip hop music video would be edited.

Mise en scene

The attention of the viewer is drawn in by The Game having his T-shirt off most of the time showing his body which is full of tattoo's and making various gang signs throughout, whereas Junior Reid in the video is dressed as if he is singing in a reggae song with his clothing and hat which he has on. There is a "Game" chain that The Game wears around his neck in the video in which he comments about along with his belt buckle. The video also contains some cars and houses from the outside in but the viewer is not drawn to this by the way the editing and main focus is on and around The Game and Junior Reid. The lighting is of daytime light that makes the video appear bright and happy while the message of the song is of gang culture which is usually associated with bad behavior and dark cruel intent on others.

Sound

Diagetic sound is played over the top of The Game and Junior Reid lip syncing to the original song but at the end of the song Junior Reid appears to sing in front of the camera in a non-diagetic manner to appeal more to the audience. the beat is at a steady tempo and in intervals introduces some fast paces of tempo, which is quite normal for a hp hop tune to do making the video even more or a typical hip hop video to the viewers. the editing is matched up quite a lot throughout the video to match the beat so that the audience can relate more to the song than they would without that effect.

Camera

The first two shots are of both singers in the video from a close up at the very first shot head on to a close up in the second shot looking up at Junior Reid to establish that The Game is on the ground level to the audience and that Junior Reid is standing on some sort of a platform. The main camera position on the artists is medium and close up's or the artists and actions that they do. The camera also pans with The Game from right to left in many different shots to try and get a more 3D feel of his action out to the audience. The camera focuses on The Games upper half of his body mainly to show the tattoo's and emphasise the gang culture further with these shots rather than having his whole body in to distract the audiences eyes.

Representation:

This video represents gang gang culture and the violence of it more than the (getting the girls) side of gang culture by having a video where not a single woman appears but rather a large number of young men gathering in typical gang clothing along with the gang tattoo's on each of their bodies to show their gang affiliation in the video makes the audience associate the people in the video with gang and gang culture, which amplifies the videos meaning of the game and his association with the gang "Bloods" in his area within Compton where he is from.