Year 12 - Media Studies

The trailer for “A Rapper's Ambition” is a short media production advertising the upcoming film of the same name in the form of a trailer. While it is relatively brief, the variety of techniques used makes it an intriguing media text to explore.

To give a short overview of the gist of the trailer, it follows a youth who has an ambition to become part of the Hip-Hop “Scene,” and the proposed movie explores his journey from amateur MC to respected rapper.

What can be immediately noticed is the lack of dialogue throughout the trailer, as music is the more prominent focus of the audio. While at first this may seem like a bad choice, the general message is portrayed successfully and the media piece in general does not suffer.

This is mostly due to the cinematography of the trailer, which is used to convey the point of the video in place of the dialogue. Thankfully, this is done well, as the composition is impressive and the wide variety of camera shots, pans, and point-of-view shots help the audience figure out what is going on.

The institution behind the media text is Hollywood, and more specifically MTV (as is shown by the introduction, which is done particularly well), and the film seems to be a hybrid between the gangster and teen movie genres. Because of this, it is expected that the target audience is teenagers between the age of 15-21, and with good reason, as older and younger viewers would find the trailer and moreover the movie itself boring, as it follows a specific trend not very relevant to these age groups.

Overall, the media text is well presented and professionally made. The acting could have been improved, as could the lighting in certain scenes, but these are only minor issues that don’t detract massively from the quality of the piece.