1. Characteristics
RUN THE WORLD
The leading singer of “Run this Town” Jay-Z is a very powerful and almost dominant male
that portrays himself as the leader of a gang. There are two other artists Rihanna and Kanye
West that are portrayed as part of his crew all dressed up in black to connote their
allegiance to him. However their status still is very powerful in the video. At the beginning of
the video its shows at least a whole town of people dressed up in black with weapons such
as wooden sticks with fire lit on them, baseball bats and also chains. The characteristics of
these people are fairly obvious to understand due to the props they have and the clothes
they are wearing.
In my music video, there is a scene where there are two boys that join up to ambush
another person. I used this video to inspire me of the type of characteristics that I would like
both characters in the music video to have. It is important that both characters have to act
fearless and reckless just like in the music video “run this town”.
Normally in music videos women tend to act
and look sexy to attract the male viewers
however in this approach Rihanna has gone for
a more hood-rat look to show that she cannot
be messed with. Even though I do no not have
any female characters in my video, I thought
that her characteristics in this video would suit
one of my characters in my music video very
well. Rihanna has black jumper which
represents the colours of the gang and has gold
on her jumper to differentiate herself with the
other members of the gang since she is the only woman within the group.
The lyrics “We gone run this town tonight”
emphasises that Jay-z Rihanna and Kanye West are
in cause to take over a town with their crew behind
them with weapons. The dim light from the fire and
the smoke connotes the danger that lies ahead and

2. there could be a potential war about to transpire. This image of part of the member of the
crew immediately gives the viewers and image that he is dangerous, due to the tattoos on
his arm and the black bandana around his face.