750 word essay

The video that I chose to talk about is called "Forever" by Drake Kayne West Lil Wayne and Eminem. I chose to talk about it because it has a lot of cuts in it due to two stories in one music video. Its a video on the rise to fame which is good to talk about as it shows from childhood to adult life.


To start off with in the first 15 seconds there is about 5 straight cuts show LeBron James playing poker and his facial expression. The cuts are good because the viewer sees what he is doing straight away, playing poker, which tells them this music video has something to do with him. After that, there is a fade out this shows the screen fading to black which tells us that there is a change in time, place and character. After the fade out, we see about 10 cuts in 13 seconds, a mixture of straight cut and a dissolve. There are a few straight cuts which just get us familiar with he is (in a club) hence the lights and tall frame, but there are more dissolves when the other characters are being introduced such as Kanye West, Lil Wayne and Eminem. I think the dissolve is used to tell us that they are all n the same place, doing the same thing, also, when the characters are being introduced, they are being introduced in a medium shot. Then when Drake starts to rap, there are two pictures of him, a close up and a medium shot to emphasise what his face looks like when he is rapping, but also his hand signals on the medium shot. It takes exactly one minute to see our first shot in the other story line of Lebron James and it is a jump cut because we do not expect it. After a second on the James story line, we cut back on to Drake rapping, but only for 2 seconds as we cut back on to James'. Now in just around 15 seconds there are 6 cuts changing from James to Drake and back again. The medium shot of LeBron James is again introducing him as a young boy playing basketball. After that there is about 15 seconds of Drake by himself until the chorus which is 20 seconds long and you see a close up of LeBron James and a close up of his coach which shows that his coach was a beneficial person in his life and he respects him.


In the first 10 seconds of Kayne's verse, the are three straight cuts of him, which implies that this minute is all his, but is soon contradicted as you see a jump cut to LeBron James Dunking which is a long shot but then you see a medium shot of him, a few team mates and his coach which again shows that without them he wouldn't be the player he is today. For 6 seconds there are a lot of cuts from LeBron to Kayne. Then for about 30 seconds it Just all Kayne. Even though its all him there are still a lot of cuts, from a medium shot to a long shot and visa versa. Then in the chorus, it starts with a close up of all the players in Lebron's team's shoes which show the hard work and team work they have, it then goes to Drake singing and then back and fourth between LeBron James and Drake, both of the cuts are predominately jump cuts with close ups and medium shots of both LeBron and Drake.


In Lil Wayne's verse there is about 12 seconds of straight cuts of Lil Wayne all of them are close ups this makes us get to know him better because before we only saw him in a medium shot. Then for 14 seconds there is jump cuts from Lil Wanyne to LeBron with Lil Wayne still being shot closely. Then just like the start, for 25 seconds you see a close up of Lil Wayne with straight cuts, the only time you do not see Lil Wayne in those 25 seconds is when you see the close up of the girls he is with, this show us that he is the man and all the girls like him. Then as usual in the chorus, we see both LeBron and Drake in simultaneous jump cuts.



Then in Eminem's verse we see a few close ups of him and his team before he starts to rap to show us what he is dealing with. Then when he starts to rap there are a lot of straight cuts of him close up and there is no sign of Lebron's story for 30 seconds then you get a glimpse of him for about a second and then it is back to Eminem for the rest of his verse.