God is a gangsta

God is a gangsta is a short film/Music video created by Jack Bergert and Kendrick lamar. The film depicts two key songs out of Kendrick Lamar's Grammy winning album, 'To Pimp A Butterfly' these songs are 'U' and 'For Free? (Interlude)' To understand this video I have to look back into an underlying theme in 'To Pimp A Butterfly' Kendrick on this album has a poem which Is read throughout the entirety of the album, The poem talks about Kendrick's struggle with rising to fame and being able to maintain his connection to his home of Compton. This poem appears in small verses after every song on the album, this short film relates to that particular poem and narrative that the album creates because the video recreates narrative moments in the album. The first half of the video is dedicated to the song 'U' which shows Kendrick verbally addressing himself and his self hatred, this relates to the narrative because in the poem it reads "Resentment, that turned into a deep depression, found myself screaming in a hotel room, I didn't want to self destruct" this particular scene in the video uses a wide variety of shots and visual effects to create a feeling of claustrophobia
every shot appears to keep us in the same type of surface area, we don't get any shots which suggest this room is any bigger, the camera is constantly locked on Kendrick following his every movement in this tiny room, even though the shots are more or less the same throughout this section of the video I find that the way the camera is constantly moving, helps the performance of Kendrick that he is portraying on screen. As for the visual effects their is a large amount of blurred affects used to create the feeling of disorientation because of Kendrick's drunkenness.I like these affects along with the cinematography used because it all results in creating a vibe which the song and the narrative of the album was trying to create, after seeing this short film I appreciate the way the director recreated this particular song because hearing it through audio and then seeing it recreated in such a visually stunning way and to give me the same type of vibe visually that parallels the feeling that the song gave me. The other half of the video is dedicated to the song For Free (Interlude) which refers to the verse in the poem that says "I didn't want to self destruct, the evils of lucy were all around me, So i went running for answer' this verse refers to Kendrick depression since becoming famous, when he refers 'Lucy' he is referring to the Devil (Lucifer) and how after he returned back to his home of Compton the temptations of the devil were encapsulating him and his Morales. This half of the video from a visual standpoint is absolutely stunning. The start of the half shows us an over the shoulder shot of a man throwing Kendrick into a pool, this man resembles Jesus physically, this also resembles him being baptised in a way, maybe to prevent him from seeing the 'evils of lucy', There is a large amount of shot, lighting and movement variations throughout this half of the video, For shots there is a large amount of close ups of Kendrick awkwardly rapping whilst many women are seducing him these shots contain movement to keep the sense that something is constantly happening with pans goibng left to right, high angle and low angle shots are used and there is a very crimson lighting effect that creates a sense of disorientation and no cohesion, random texts appear on the screen creating this strange feeling like this is not in the real world like it is a dream of some type. God is a gangsta is a well crafted short film which inspires me to use a large variation of shots and lighting effects to create some more interesting imagery when creating my project, even though it's not a mockumentary it would be good to find some more interesting shots to entertain and confuse the audience.

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