Case Study: JeromeD

I have decided to do my Case Study on JeromeD. Hurd who directs a lot of hip-hop music videos for Kendrick Lamar and ScHoolBoy Q most famously but also directs for other rappers such as King Los in his song WAR. He also helps Ty Dolla Sign with his music videos a lot too but I will just be focussing on the 3 artists mentioned prior.






Kendrick Lamar


Backseat Freestyle


In JeromeD's videos he always begins with a black screen and a series of titles, artist name, song title and then JeromeD but in Backseat Freestyle the editing oscillates wildly, it flickers back and forth in a monochromic tone. It then begins to title a series of places 'Paris, France' and then the conventional information in his videos such as 'JeromeD.com' but then in red writing 'Compton, CA' shows up with Lamar singing 'Martin had a dream'. The straight up connotations of equality from Martin Luther King's iconic speech is parallel with the visual aspect of  'Compton, CA' the semantics of Compton (even more so now the film Straight Outta Compton has been premiered globally) are very much of hip-hop and black culture.
Backseat Freestyle is in monochrome for all of the music video, JeromeD does this in a lot of his music videos, he puts a B&W effect on his videos that have address the inequality between Black and White cultures. He doesn't do this in Collard Greens by ScHoolBoy Q, The One by Treasure Davis or Swimming Pools (Drank) that are more party songs and don't address the white/black racial tensions that rappers accentuate frequently.
JeromeD focusses on editing as a key convention in a lot of his music videos - the radical editing in this and other songs he has directed for (Collard Greens) is used frequently to set the pace of the song by altering the colours and splitting the film symmetrically down the center.




Swimming Pools (Drank)


JeromeD also directs Kendrick Lamar's song named Swimming Pools (Drank) that is aesthetically pleasing with Kendrick Lamar suspended in the air falling into a swimming pool (of liquor) but the fall is rather the journey of the song. The lyrics claim he is 'diving' into the pool but the video implies that is falling from grace and drowning in the pool, there is a juxtaposition of lyrics and visuals which could infer that Lamar has desire to portray himself as a rapper that likes partying and getting drunk but he is actually different (complimented by the psychological confusion stated later on in the song). However in this video there is no titles at the start. This could be due to this song coming out in 2012 and the songs where the titles are at the start was all made in 2013 until now. This is an example of an iterative adaptation of JeromeD where conventions are created probably by accident, it acts as an informative and necessary additive in his videos. It not only provides the context but it sets a neutral tone, the titled-opening occurs in JeromeD's music videos where they accost racial inequality, examples: War - King Los, Backseat Freesyle - Kendrick Lamar.
Swimming Pools is a different style of film altogether compared to JeromeD's other stuff, the song shows Lamar in isolation away from the party opposed to Collard Greens. The party scene in Swimming Pools is deviant to any other party scene, JeromeD has utilised a slow-motion effect on the party scene and has laid over the video Kendrick Lamar's 'conscience' talking to him which implies psychological issues, weakness and paranoia that the protagonist could be experiencing. The tone and pace is a lot less than in other songs directed by JeromeD, however he retains his editing prowess and aesthetically intriguing conventions.




King Los


War


The music video in War is in stark contrast to other JeromeD's projects, the editing is lacking, he utilises one long shot throughout the entire video that tracks different characters and always comes back to the TV screen (complying to Goodwins theory of voyeurism as he suggests in music videos we very often watch TV/look inside a camera etc), a recurring theme in this song as the relationship between lyrics and visuals(complying to Goodwins theory about the relationship between lyrics and video) are emphasised with the lyrics
"It’s a war on your TV screen every mornin’ / Not a war with the bombs and helicopters swimming / But the a war for your soul / That’s what everyone ignoring"
the TV shows King Los singing and clips of religion, community and distressing images of an abuse of power. This montage has a very strong effect when parallel with the semantics of war against equality, the oppression of black people and the reliance on God and community, friends and family. The juxtaposition between people holding hands and police brutality is a harsh, realistic portrayal that King Los feels strongly about.
At the end of the music video when the two protagonists leave their home and family and get into a car, when they do this a man runs up to the car and shoots them both. These two concepts JeromeD and King Los utilise are both political statements that reflect the zeitgeist of Black Americans.









ScHoolBoy Q


Hands On The Wheel


I have already done one textual analysis about ScHoolBoy Q and focussed on JeromeD's editing techniques and Collard Greens so I decided to analyse another song by ScHoolBoy Q that JeromeD has directed and include a type of comparison of them.
The video is monochromic and begins with the titles "ScHoolBoy Q" "A$AP Rocky" who the song is featuring and then "Hands on the Wheel" the video is swinging like a pendulum onto two male protagonists that are smoking, this one clip is repeated a series of times but a bit differently each time, upside down and reversed but each time with a sporadic white flash giving the song an edgy feel, even though its repeated it isn't monotonous due to the pendulumic swing and movement. The video cuts to Q rapping with the video cutting to other repeated clips of women dancing and bottles/cans of alcohol. Similar to Collard Greens there are many connotations to drug taking and getting intoxicated supported by the sporadic editing that gives a visceral representation of the effects of drugs, this is a key theme in ScHoolBoy Q's videos with JeromeD.
The video also features women dancing next to the protagonists, the women are portrayed secondary to the rapper for multiple reasons: 1) they aren't the focus of the video, the record label want the rapper to be the central focus of the video to boost fame. Goodwin could claim that these are due to the demands of the record label as the portrayal of the artist is mainly by appearance and it is required that they appeal to their desired audiences.  2) Mulvey would argue that women are portrayed as second class citizens, they are decorative objects to make the rappers look more masculine.

The 100 "Greatest"

The term greatest is a very subjective word but NME have designed a list that I believe is generally there, including Foo Fighters - Everlong that I think is probably one of the best music videos every made, probably being biased due to my Grohlian love but it is truly art. Everlong's music video is very to my taste, the surrealism that occurs in it. It is very much like one of them dreams you have where you wake up and have no idea what just happened.
The music video focusses on dreams and nightmares and just general freakiness but it is probably the best music video ever made.
The Foos are notorious for their stupidly funny music videos with Everlong, Learn to Fly and Long Road to Ruin. Their styles are very Hollywood with Long Road to Ruin even having a TV Series introduction to their music video with a cast list and theme song. The narrative then takes over and it follows a plot of Grohl, the main character. It has a very weird 80s hospital drama aura and is absolutely hilarious to watch with Dave Grohl crying every 10 seconds, pretending to be this macho character but is really this emotional guy. They subvert  a lot of themes in their music videos and is something that I am seriously considering to base my music videos on. A parallel story of live-performance based and a narrative that the band follows.
Pretty much every Foo Fighters music video could be on the list but Everlong's surrealism and comedy is too much to handle, it is artistic and humorous.


It is clear after reading this list that the top music video directors are Spike Jonze (who was 2 of the best 10 in the list with Beastie Boys - Sabotage and Weezer - Buddy Holly)
But one of my favourite additions to the list was number 19, Hot Chip's I Feel Better directed by Peter Serafinowicz (Darth Maul!) that focusses on the brainwashing of this Boy Band's fan base as he slowly eliminates all of the group and makes himself the leader. A common trend in this list is humour and this video doesn't lack in that.

Genre Theory Application: ScHoolBoy Q - Collard Greens (ft. Kendrick Lamar)

Q's music video of Collard Greens has an artistic style featuring a variety of editing techniques such as making the main artist shown in a kaleidoscope effect, in negative and his head floating. The abundance of editing techniques gives the song a rather psychedelic and edgy aura coinciding with the songs expeditious rhythms. This complies to Goodwin's theory stating that the music will have a relationship with the video, this is evident here including the multi-coloured-kaleidoscopic-psychotomimetic effects that JeromeD utilises effectively.




JeromeD
JeromeD is a well-known music video director that uses house parties frequently in his music video, for example he also directed Kendrick Lamar's (who is also featured in this song) Swimming Pools (drank) that uses a house party in his video too but almost in polar opposite ways. The houseparty in Q's video is full of dancing and nude women, the frequently shown butterfly tattoo on a women's bum forces us to see women as a sexual object, they are dancing for Q and due to all the women in this video to have large boobs and bums out it complies to Mulvey's theory of the male gaze, voyeurism is apparent within Collard Greens as we are not only looking at Q and Lamar rapping but due to the centric positioning of most of the people in the video, it makes us feel like we are also being watched as actors in the video are staring back at us many times.
Voyeurism is also a convention of Goodwin's theory, he believes that all music videos have a sense of voyeurism in and when compared to this music video, it is true, we are constantly watching people dance.






Collard Greens is a modern hip hop song that features rap, beat boxing and DJ scratching from Q, rap being a sub-genre of hip hop I struggled to find another genre in this song. Altman believes there is no longer a rigid genre structure, genres are more fluid and leak into one another. No song is to a single genre or it would be very boring and generic. After a lot of analysis of this music video and its hip hop conventions I struggled to prove Altman's theory, however, I then realised that this music video wasn't created to intellectually comply to a lot of theories but instead it was rather visceral and just felt like it hadn't only been influenced by hip hop, but also by Reggae as the final part of the video, the party progresses from the house to outside, in pools and on a beach and it becomes less psychedelic and slower, it becomes like a completely different music video, it gets quite lethargic, quite drowsy.


I believe that the music videos are being forced to adapt to the audiences wants, for example within this music video it snaps to simple white text such as 'ScHoolBoy Q' and 'JeromeD' and 'Kendrick Lamar' but later on it also says '#Oxymoron' converging to modern trends as on Twitter they use # so that the audience can also get involved. Music videos are becoming ephemeral trends, creativity is being strained and some artists will fall but some will flourish, for example Q getting a film director to make his music video is showing the adaptation artists are going through and the progression of music video as a concept which forces them to get creativity and forces  the birth of 'mini-movies'.