For my final project, i was inspired from the get go. To be given an opportunity to bring a topic, a question of our choosing into life… it had to be big. so I went for the most controversial and the most difficult topic I’ve done yet. Gender equality. specifically in the UK. Due to cultural, religious and old fashioned community upbringing; gender equality and the meaning behind what that truly entails in the family home and amongst society has always been a conundrum in the centre of my mind. A quick press of a few buttons in Google proved that I certainly am not the only one, and with times changing as rapidly as they are with the controversy of men having curfews at night, sexual assaults committed against men that go unacknowledged by women, paternity leave becoming the new law or how to indeed close the wage gap. Or even if we should?! ; I felt it high time to begin to answer or at least discuss whether women truly still are the victims, how far we’ve gone with feminism ( that’s now somehow become “toxic”) and whether the recent movement of “men’s rights activists” have justified truths to be answered for just as much as women’s. And the way I’ve decided to do it, will be through a rap music video.
Research wasn’t difficult as much as it was vast. It was a matter of choosing my sources and making sure to be fair to both sexes. My first go to was the Internet and the storm going on in twitter, Tiktok and the local news tabloids to look for people’s loudest opinions on what they believe is currently unfair amongst the men and women in the UK. There were an abundance of videos, articles and documentaries on the subject in UK alone which I made a short video out of. Amongst the chaos, I came across psychologist/philosopher Jordan Peterson. He’d recently written a book and theorised his ideas on why gender equality isn’t realistic in all the ways people want it to be and why the patriarchy doesn’t really exist. In one of his debates, he talked about how our culture confuses men’s desire for achievement and confidence with the patriarchal desire for tyrannical power. That this had proven to psychologically have a detrimental affect on UK’s societies male population.
He argued that we use only a small substrata of hyper successful men to represent the entire structure of the patriarchy. The fundamental basis of the structure isn’t power. It’s competence. That’s why it works. It’s only when the structure becomes a tyranny. We do have tyrannical elements. Afterall, one of the biggest steps towards emancipating women in the 20th century was the invention of tampons and baby formula which were inevitably invented by men.
Actual philosopher/writer and professor Simone de Beauvoir who wrote ” The Second Gender” ( a source to my research for my lyrics) philosophised that ones destiny isn’t pre written and therefore one’s gender status in society isn’t preassigned. She argued that giving in to women’s preassigned destiny by society is an easy road; on it one avoids the strain involved in undertaking an authentic existence… Woman may fail to lay claim to the status of subject because… she is often very well pleased with her role as the Other” (The Second Sex ). She urged women to resist the temptation to remain inferior by acting docile, complacent, or infantile. she claims that women must seize their own liberation through enlightenment and be recognized in the public sphere as human beings distinct from men but equal to them. It was in researching these established public figures, I realise that her and Jordan Peterson agree that only by embracing their differences will men and women create a state of equality and respect for both sexes. I had found a mutual solution!
My final source for my argument is Ruth Ginsburg. Prophesying that the #Metoo movement is here to stay, She dedicated her career to ensuring that marginalized groups received justice. Everyone knows of her revolutionary work in fighting for women rights to not be discriminated against employees based on gender or reproductive choices. However she also fought for men and pointed out to the US government and the world that the standards for how sex-based laws are evaluated under the constitution must be changed. In the 1970s case; Charles Moritz, who was responsible for the care of his elderly mother had been denied a caregiving tax deduction because he was an unmarried man. By representing him, Ginsburg was able to show male judges that sex discrimination hurt men as well as women.
Ginsburg couldn’t possibly be right about the tax law, argued the government, because if she was, then hundreds if not thousands of other laws would be unconstitutional, too. Ginsburg prevailed. She understands that in order for women to step out of the caregiver role, men must step in. And the thing that distinguishes men and women the most is parenthood. UK stats themselves proved that. Courtesy of national statistics.
Now that the research was complete, the next step was the song itself! I came up with the title “parity” because at the time, It was simply a word I’d found was very uncommonly used when describing equality even though that’s Which proved to be the most difficult task of all, it wasn’t coming up with the words that was as difficult as coming up with a rhythm and a flow… for this I must give credit to “Sal” from #epicmusicplanet whom I consulted for feedback each time I’d produced a draft so that I could keep an eye on my diction and whether my message was coming across clearly. She showed me that repetition in the chorus and consistency throughout the song would make all the difference. However when my rap was in danger of turning into a song ( Sal being a singer not a rapper ) I would consult my rapper/husband who would school me on road slang and the rules of British grime. Which was that there were no rules. This definitely made me feel better about producing a 5 minute long song that were just facts and figures from two points of view. I was heavily inspired by and relied on two songs alone to produce the lyrics and music itself. There’s were ” I’m not racist ” by joiner Lucas and ” his and her point of view ” by wretch32. Both songs were six minutes long and were based on two points of view. With one voice portraying both. I chose to collaborate with my husband/#behemothstrength because he inspired me to question men’s inequality in society from the start. It was during those 3am arguments on sexism and toxic feminism/ masculinity that I got inspired to do the research. He also has years of experience writing and rapping his own grime music, it made me feel confident that he’d be able to help bring my vision to life .
It took three weeks all together to write and record the lyrics into a mock up. The research I’d written were all generally based on a few set topics ( sexual assault/harassment, maternity/paternity leave, gender pay gap, domestic abuse, mental health, vulnerability in society, addiction ) . This was simple. What what was difficult, was coming up with a solution for each one and how I could portray that in a rap. I began asking questions and starting conversations with anyone I met. Asking what they’re idea of gender equity was? The responses were varied. Free pads, women getting arrested for sexual assault and for society to accept men reporting it, more homeless shelters for men, to educate young school children that career choices do make a difference in future to your wage and that men and women are different and that true equality goes without privilege.
The logistics for my lyrics were four main arguments points for both genders, with the bridge being a long solution to several different issues. . From here the only other challenge was music, flow and diction. It didn’t seem that hard at the time
After my first mock up attempt ( with feedback being that it was too fast, too many swear words, bias against men, hard to understand, had no structure and unpleasant to listen to ) the lyrics had been reworked 4 times and taken the span of several weeks with several more failed mock ups in lyric videos and no closer to sounding like we have a flow. I had downloaded a software called “logic Pro x” borrowing a friends Mac to see if I could produce my own custom made music. I also found a website called “splice” which worked with logic Pro and was a place to find original beats and sound to put together. After looking through a tonne of video tutorials on how to get started, I found three suitable beats to mesh together on logic Pro x and began working with my rap artist from there. It was a lot like working with premier Pro in terms of layers and timing, it was very easy and simple making a riff ( a short melodic rhythm that consists of a few bars and is consistent throughout the song) to a chorus, Bridge and outro. It wasn’t as challenging learning the rules of song writing as it was learning the meaning of bars and how to count them. Lawrence Hobbs ( the music producer in safe music group ) whom I later met when we began officially recording the song had advised that a bar is a time sequence corresponding to a specific number of beats your lyrics have ( 1 2 3 4 ). I later learned that I had 112. Each session in the studio cost £36 for two hours, we had four sessions to get the my song to flow as well as possible and to give my rapper time to practice getting his own rhythm and confidence with lyrics that weren’t his own. I learned that that was a very difficult thing to do. After a week between each session and planet of rehearsing, he realised that he can get the right tone for the women’s verse by projecting his choice in a higher feminine tone. Like what wretch 32 did in his song ( his and her point of view ). From, there it was smooth sailing.
Now for the exciting part, what theme am I going for to portray “parity”? It was around this time that I was introduced to the game of chess, I was hosting a dinner and a girlfriend of mine taught my husband/rapper how to play. Watching them compete against one another…how competitive they became and how they attempted to use logic and wit to beat each other. It made me think about the “battle of the sexes” which then snowballed into researching art inspired by chess which then led me to some very inspirational imagery. It seemed that the gender equality argument had reached an all time stalemate and my first instinct was to use that as a symbol of the argument and have the chess game feature in all my imagery and the video itself.
It took time looking into what sort of outputs were appropriate for a single other than the video itself. I settled with a poster, an album cover, album cover t shirt, a lyric video and a behind the scenes video. The main output to any single is the social media promotions, constant hints and titbits over the theme and the look of the video itself. But to do any of that, I needed a basic aesthetic. I was inspired once I found out my rapper/husband had never watched a basic classic ” The Breakfast Club”. It was whilst showing him the trailer and poster I made the connection between my “parity” and the dispute these polar opposites had throughout the film and the understanding they gained of one another by the end. I recruited my photographer friend who also studies in Kingston to collaborate with me to take the photographs I needed as reference to create my outputs and to operate the camera for my video shoot. The photoshoot was done in her photography classroom and my rapper and I posed as the criminal and as the Princess ( purely because the two were the most opposing to one another but had the most chemistry). Like the breakfast club, u wanted the debate/rap to take place in a classroom/detention setting. Where the oppositions were uninterested and against each other in the beginning. I wanted to portray that visually. So I recreated the movie characters my way and used the same background colour palette as the movie poster to make my acts pop more. It took two tries and minor changes to the font to get the perfect poster and album cover and to fully portray my stained glass/ holy trinity inspiration into life without overcrowding my work.
Directing the video was the longest and most time consuming part of this whole journey. A great deal of planning and preparing had to go towards this video. It involved listing props, scheduling my collaborators ( Alesia/camera operator, rapper/partner ), finding the appropriate locations to film all of my scenes, working out all the equipment I needed and working all the costume changes required. At first, the video was scheduled to take five days… however during the shoot, there were many mistakes made; such as the camcorder not being focused on many of the scenes during the shoot, I couldn’t get comfortable enough to lip sync my part of the sing properly as a princess”, I found this part extremely frustrating as I am not a princess. I identified more with the basket case and filmed her part in one take. The filming days went from five to ten days to get each of the scenes perfect. Directing nineteen scenes was bound to have its set backs and having one thing go wrong leading to many scenes having to be re-filmed. However if having to go through nineteen costume changes in thirteen sets five times doesn’t show my determination, I don’t know what does.
I would like to say a HUGE thank you to #Geoffrey.prints whom I approached to print two copies of my single album cover t-shirts. We agreed upon a fair price of £10 each as the image was already illustrated and just needed two colours. The method he used was printing the link image from a cri-cut imagine and then professionally ironing the image onto the t-shirt. My poster and single cover were also part of the merch, however I seriously considered burning and printing my cover into a vinyl record. The cover would have really suited it and I liked the marketing angle from selling a vinyl with one one single. Limited edition and all that. However the was no way to print it without ordering in bulk and for a great amount of money. I would also have no part of its making process which meant I wouldn’t learn anything.
Post editing was surprisingly simple. Needless to say it took over 10 editing attempts to get the final edit perfect. Along with taking into account the feedback that was given over how clear the message was and to still experiment with different styles/ techniques. The truth Is that I was already very set on my videos VHS/80s look, I didn’t think it needed anything else on account of it being already very busy and complex. I used a video tutorial to create a VHS filter on premiere pro and an app “YouCut” to merge and trim my clips into one video that synced with the rap. The most complex part of the process was the first/introductory scene where I wanted to use one editing. For this I used a mixture of premiere pro and app ” Capcut” to merge together three clips into once space. The Breakfast Club scene/intro alone took four attempts, as the first rule of clone editing is to make sure that the two clones aren’t touching in anyway. Which proved difficult in a small seating space and five clones but I prevailed in the end.
Other than this entire project being an endless experiment ( having never written a song, directed a music video, made my own music, been to recording studio etc ), upon feedback I was advised to experiment with rotoscoping. I looked into the technique and learned that rotoscoping was an editing technique that makes a film or video into a filtered cartoon. I was apprehensive but I understood the reason behind experimenting with it, my poster/cover had an illustrative aesthetic. Why not make the video that way too? The main programmes needed were either after affects, Premier Pro and ebsynth. I learnt that the process involved exporting your video into an image sequence and then illustrating onto the images that involved the most change in movement on photoshop. Then exporting those images onto ebsynth that then ( using AI ) would use that information to create an animated sequence on premiere pro. I attempted this with my entire video however it took too long to export a five minute long video into an image sequence and it completely destroyed my storage. So I attempted to create a mini animation clip for the chorus of the song. This was thirty-one seconds long and far simpler to export. However it wasn’t meant to be… After several failed attempts to export my image sequence into ebsynth and it crashing each time, I was happy put the experience down as an experiment.
Throughout the project, the side challenge that I personally found difficult to keep up with was the constant social media posts to promote my singles video. I made it an intention to promote my video on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube. Most of it could only be posted after my final version of the video. However I did post throughout my production journey, I tactfully began posting about chess games, to photoshoots, to behind the scenes to posters to merch and finally to the video shortcut itself with a link leading to the full thing on YouTube. It was nerve racking posting on Tiktok for the first time as I’d never used it but it so far produced a satisfactory 246 views which I’m happy with. I use my “YouCut” app to create after affects and filters so that my short clips come out as interactive and eye catching. This proved affective as well as inviting collaborators onto my posts such as epic music planet which is an upcoming new music label.
All in all, this experience was exciting and one I can say came out exactly as I’d hoped it would. There was truly nothing I feel I could have researched further or done more of. I feel I fully understand the UKs perspective as a whole on what gender equality looks like from a mutual stand point. I really do believe that the way we achieve it is if we acknowledge that we’re all individual but still have the right to be treated with equal respect and understanding with a pinch of empathy to one others vulnerabilities. Acknowledging the problems is the first step. Tackling the gap between parental roles in men and women is the first step to close the wage gap and the second is educating young people that there will be a difference in wage if the majority of girls choose art and history and the boys who pick IT and maths. Which despite the higher exams scores girls receive, men are more likely to achieve higher salaries due to more preferring STEM ( science, technology, engineering and maths) based careers. I personally also believe that schools are the main influence and more funds should be allocated as one good and fairly paid teacher, can make a difference in a young persons life who has no role model.
It was an honour working on something as challenging and as unsolved as gender equality. I gained a new admiration for philosopher Simone de Beauvoir and to music artists as a whole. You can never understand the amount of work it takes until you do it yourself. I won’t be the next pop star or Oscar winning actress but I’m proud I got myself into a music video at least once.
Portfolio of Mine- Gurlshan 