Case Study 1 - SL - Tropical - VisualsByKaylum

SL - tropical - KAYLUM

Textual Analysis:

SL - Tropical is a music video that was directed by director Kaylum Dennis. this music video, i feel, was intended to tie into the very soft and mellow video that the song itself creates. the video opens with an establishing drone shot of a 4X4 driving down a snowy road and transitions to a range of b-roll of the artist and location. The video location is in the Icelandic Vistas and the video heavily features lots of B-Roll of the environment, drone shots, and slow-motion shots. The director used lots of different angles like close ups of the artist and long-shots when capturing the artist on top of the car.

 A majority of the shots are of the location and i feel they did this to fully capture the beauty in the location and i feel they did this successfully. Even Though the setting is a very cold place, the video has been colour corrected and looks a lot warmer than it it probably was originally. The camera work is great; there is little to no noise in the picture and i liked how the camera man used shallow depth of field in a range of the shots in the video.

This music video is a performance type music video because majority of the shots are of the artist performing his song. The artist is wearing a grey and white and Nike Tracksuit and grey and white Air Max 97's with a grey face-mask/balaclava. Not only does the outfit link to the genre - UK Rap - but it and the environment both compliment each other because they are, more or less, the same colour. Even the cars and the villa used in the video match his outfit - all the colours are complementing each other and nothing looks out of place. This also, feel allows for them to not take focus away from the location used as it does play a huge part in the success of this music video; the beauty of the high quality cinematic shots.

They used 1 prop in the music video and that was the Land Rover Defender and i feel that it was a nice touch and would appeal to the target audience and didn't look over the top or make the video look tacky. The editing is very basic; he has only used fades and normal cuts but, i feel that these simple cuts are successful in creating this crisp and cinematic finish. There are only a handful of shots that were actually used in the music video and i actually came across a couple repeated shots like the shot of the artists' shoes was used twice. the takes are quite lengthy but have been cut and placed at random points within the video thus, having lots of similar shots repeated. The only effects used in the music video is Slow motion and i feel that this made the video seem even more dramatic and cinematic. the use of simple effects like slow motion makes the video seem more professional and less tacky.

Audience Analysis:

SL is a UK Rap artist from South London and i feel his music is targeted at Teens and young adults aged 15-24 who like to listen to UK Rap/Grime/Drill. The teens who listen to this type of music typically are from more urban areas in London like, for example, Hackney, Newham, and Southwark and possibly live in council estates or dangerous areas. I feel he caters to his audience because of the topics he tackles in his lyrics like smoking weed, selling drugs and gang culture. He even uses urban slang in his lyrics that only people who are a part of his target audience would even understand.

 the genre of this particular song "tropical" is UK Drill and this genre is heavily influenced by gang culture however, SL goes against the stereotypical Drill song format and makes it his own. Typically, Drill music videos are shot in council estates and are meant to be intimidating and promote gang violence but, SL completely radicalises this and shoots his video in the Icelandic vistas. 

I feel that this song received lots of positive responses because he did something new and refreshing by changing the mundane and repetitive style of drill music videos. SL posted his video on a YouTube channel called "Mixtape Madness" which is a music distribution channel that is mainly made to promote UK Rap Artists. You can actually pay them to post you music video and this channel has over 600,000 subscribers so you're bound to get a lot of views if you post on this channel.

 SL already had a Hit prior to "Tropical", that currently has over 25 million views, so he had already formed a fan base. Mixtape madness also have other social media so, because SL was bringing them views, they promote his music a lot on Instagram and twitter. SL also teased "tropical" on social media to get his fans excited for it to come out and this lead to his fans promoting it for him, free of charge, and that was a great way of marketing himself. The use of social media was meant to directly target his target audience as they are the majority who actually use social media.

Industry Analysis:

The music video was Produced by a director named  Kaylum Dennis. He has worked with the likes of Not3s and STORMZY and has produced many music videos for them and other artists in the past. he's currently working under STORMZY's brand "MERKY" but he does work alone so he can still be considered as a small business/company. in SL "tropical", I feel Kaylum wanted to challenge the representation of drill music and he achieved this by the change in location to a typical drill video and how it was so much more cinematically shot in comparison to a drill video.

The only thing that made the song a drill music video was his outfit and the lyrics/flow of the song yet, he managed to make it seem normal and not out of place. Based on how the video turned out and how it was shared the reach was very good as the video has received over 13 million views however, it wasn't on the level of a media conglomerate so, i would say it only received a local reach as most of its viewers from the UK, mainly London. This is because it was published on a YouTube channel dedicated to promoting UK Rap/Drill artists and their audience is very niche and specific so, only their subscribers are most likely to view the video. The technology used to create this video was a DSLR Camera with a good lens, Rigs for the camera - Steadicam for example, a drone, and editing software to cut and put the shots together.

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