Kanye West Touch The Sky ft. Lupe Fiasco Video Analysis

Again this song falls into the hip-hop/rap genre, similar to our song 'Goodnight'. However, this analysis differs from our other analysis of Devlins, 'London City', because this song has been produced by an American artist who has international aclaim. Consequently, the budget of this video far outweighs that of 'London City' and it's interesting to see how much the quality of the video changes when you have far less financial backing.

In this video kanye portrays himself as being quite arrogant. This video was directed by Chris Milk and filmed as a '70s style short movie about daredevil Evel Kanyevil and his attempt to fly a small rocket across the Grand Canyon (a parody of Evel Knievel's unsuccessful jump across the Snake River Canyon in 1974) In addition, there are ‘star’ appearances in this video such as Pamela Anderson who plays the role of Kanye’s controversial girlfriend. This promotes the video greatly as she is popular and very glamorous. This also goes to highlight the stark difference in finance between US hip-hop stars and UK hip-hop stars as it is very unlikely that a UK hip-hop video would feature the likes of Pamela Anderson. There is also some handheld camerawork, which gives the effect of someone actually being at the scene. The lip-syncing is very effective and seamless, there are parts where the words are delivered as if they were in a conversation, like a TV program. The colouring has been changed to give the video a nostalgic effect. The video also has very bright lighting, which reflects the message of the song as being happy and joyful. Almost every shot is of kanye, highlighting the fact that he is the star and the centre of attention; there are many mid and high angle shots of kanye alone in the clouds, which is a reference to the title of the song “touch the sky’ and makes him look superior. In addition, there are many high angle shots when hes sizing up his jump, this promotes the scenery, mise-en scene and could suggest that hes looking down on himself from the clouds. There is also an extreme long/vertical tilt shot before he performs his stunt, which suggests something will go wrong, also is when Kanye says ‘for the day I die’ there is a close up of his rocket, showing us that that something is going to go disastrously wrong later on. Later, when the plane crashes there is a mid shot of his plane crashing in a dramatic fashion into the gorge fulfilling the prophecy. Another effective feature of the video is that the editing is cut to the beat which makes the video seem much more upbeat and joyous.