‘Throw Some Ds’ is directed by Bernard Gourley, who is also responsible for last year’s equally-amazing video for Three-Six Mafia’s ‘Stay Fly’. Both are well-orchestrated but fairly loose, medium budget, Southern rap videos that eschew narrative but also resist being just a bunch of cool-looking shots (although it contains plenty of those…). See, most music videos, especially rap videos, commit to the formula of mixing some kind of vague narrative with performance footage; We get the rapper in front of something or a few things rhyming and then when that gets old, it bounces to that rapper and his friends hanging out or literalizing the lyrics of the song or whatever and then back again, repeating for the next 3-4 minutes. Both of Gourley’s videos mentioned, manage to meld the performance and storyline together. ‘Stay Fly’ is essentially Three-Six’s night-out in Miami- from the hotel to the limo to club and back again, rapping in each location- and ‘Throw Some Ds’ finds Rich Boy waking up, leaving his house, and then rapping throughout the town. Rich Boy performs in a few locations and throughout his verses, the camera sort of strays away to reveal some effective shots of people and cars, that punctuate his raps. There’s still this performance/narrative divide, but because it’s all in the same location, it feels more cohesive.
There are some particularly amazing shots of Rich Boy, in the center of the frame, rapping, as cars weave around him, and dozens of great close-ups of spinning wheels, sides of cars, and what I’m going to call “characters” in the video. I say “characters” and not extras because the people afforded a close-up are quite memorable and often, the way they receive their close-up, humanizes them in a way that most music videos don’t fuck around with…Let’s start with the shots of the ridiculously hot chick in the teal-ish hoodie, sitting atop Polow Da Don’s car.If you look at the above frame, you can see her legs behind Polow’s head, but the first time you really become aware of her is actually in close-up. See, the video’s sort of a whirl of performance shots of Rich Boy in numerous locations (in a car, atop a roof, in a convenience store, in front of a house) and then “characters” and objects that occupy the same space as those performance shots. Even before Polow drops his verse, the video’s cut to him a bunch of times bouncing up and down, with Rich Boy in the mid-ground and caddy and girl in the background. You barely notice the girl is even there until suddenly, a true close-up of her singing along to the chorus and nodding her head is provided. The it goes back to the super-wide shot and now, this anonymous girl in the video has a face.This girl is really “the chick” of the video but other than her I-guess-that’s-sexy gum-stretching, she’s just chilling out and singing along like everybody else. She’s afforded this humane and genuine close-up and is otherwise, relegated to the background, never “objectified” or anything like that. It isn’t that the video is making any sort of radical, filmic “statement” about objectification, it’s just that it’s a video interested in faces and regionalism and reality. The video is filled with real locations (in wide shot) and real faces (in close-up) with medium-shots almost exclusively given to Rich Boy and Polow. This is how Gourley divides between “performance” and “narrative”; it isn’t by something as obvious and clear as a different location, but in what kinds of shots are allotted to what kinds of people.
Another example of the humanizing effects of the close-up is a wide-shot of a young guy, standing in front of his car. That shot is followed-up by a slow-motion pan that admires the guy’s car, and then we get a tight-close-up of his face, staring into the camera. He isn’t joyful but he’s not doing any kind of hard-ass scowling either, he’s just sort of staring sincerely and defiantly.What I like about this close-up is the way it sort of confounds the effect of the wide-to-close device. The two-shot sequence of going from very-wide to very-close is a visceral editing “trick” that is both stylistically cool and also based on basic audience reward. The wide shot is the set-up and the close-up, the punchline or… the wide shot, the question (you see a lot but it’s all a bit unclear or overwhelming), and the close-up, the answer (focus on a small part of the formerly wide composition, it’s now clear). Gourley confounds this by placing that slow-motion pan between the wide and the close-up. I think if the shot simply went from wide of the car to close-up of the guy, it would be as if the guy is defined by his car: Wide (Whose car is that?)/Close-Up (It is that guy’s car). Instead, Gourley throws-in that slo-mo pan that I see as like, admiring, even objectifying the car (the way most videos objectify women) and it sort of moves it beyond such a simple sense of ownership or even boasting, and into appreciation. It’s sort of the typical neighborhood interaction in three shots: sees the car (wide), likes the car (slo-mo pan), tells the owner of car how nice their car is (close-up).
One of the many locations for Rich Boy’s “performance” parts, is in front of an wooden, green-painted house. Late in the video, there’s a shot of Rich Boy rapping in front of this house and in the background, sitting on the porch is an old man. You’d only see the old man in this shot if you’re really paying attention, but it goes from this shot where he’s barely noticable, to a close-up of the old man. The barely-in-the-background shot of the “character” to the extreme close-up is the same sequence of shot used for the hot girl, but here it takes on added weight and humanity…Seeing the old man in close-up reveals in fairly-explicit detail, his missing eye. At first, it’s shocking because only the astute viewer even picks up on the old man’s appearance in the previous shot and in that shot, one could not tell he is missing a fucking eye! So, it’s a shock-cut in a way but the next shot, a wider shot, changes the context.Going wide after the shock-close-up is effective in lessening the shock and once again, humanizing this “character”; It is a reversal of the guy with the car in the sense of the set-up/punchline or question/answer stuff I was babbling about. Here, it begins with the shocking cut (he has one eye) and then goes wide (his whole body) and so, he is first seen as a dude with one eye and then as a whole person. If the shots were reversed (see below), you’d see the old man and then see his missing eye and so, he’d become an old man with one eye. It would almost be like a horror movie cut in the sense of starting with the mundane and then going-in for the shocking. Showing the eye and then going wide, makes you get over the shock of the eye and see the guy as a person.
The video couches this humanity in typical rap video imagery and adjusts it slightly, which also fits Rich Boy’s song. ‘Throw Some Ds’ is not a political rap song, but it isn’t the “dumb” rap song it sometimes is mistaken for, either. It is a kind of everyman rap single, that tries to approximate the minor, down-to-earth victory of getting some new, awesome rims on your car and the video, responds in-kind by humanizing the people in most rap videos that are used only as short-hand for “hardness” (one-eyed man, young guy and his car) or hotness (the girl in the hoodie).
Are You A Serious Comic Book Reader?
This blog is pretty cool! How can I make one like this .
dynowatt
6 Jun 12 at 7:26 pm