Or Not To Be

Being a young and black musician, I feel it’s important that the people who made it in the music industry set an example for people in my position. Looking at the Black men in the industry nowadays, I see a great deal of negativity in their music and actions. For this video, I wanted to explore how Black men in the Hip-Hop/RnB music industry are perceived through the eyes of aspiring young black men who are musicians. I interviewed local young artist and asked them questions about what they thought about black musicians in the industry. I wanted a variety of perspectives, so I got three different people who are in different roles in music: a poet/singer, a bassist, and a DJ/Producer. After the interviews is a poet’s interpretation of Black men in the music industry. I wanted this video to be simple when it came to editing. If this video was over edited, it would take away from the content of the video. I didn’t use a cross fade from scene to scene so that the dialogue would continue smoothly rather than having awkward pauses. I wanted to have have different angles for each interviewer to have variety. I integrated verses of the poem “Wake Up” to add further content in the video to get the viewer thinking how the poem connects with the topic before it is heard later in the video.

Gender Exploration Video.