Ben Peters

Ben Peters is a urban music director who has directed music videos for artist such as N-Dubz,Sway and Talay Riley.

Ben Peters spoke to me and my media class and gave us vital information on producing/ directing music videos. This gave me an insight in creating my music video as I gave me an understanding what needed to be done, tips, for example to be creative; different angle shots and misc-en-scene is important as for example in Talay Riley's Humanoid, the dancers moving in robot form and electric lighting related to what the song was about and related to the electric sounded beat.
The essential notes that I took down and learnt were:

• The reason why music videos are short is for a simple business reason; music channels are enable to include as much videos as they can.
• Key notice that the less you shot makes it easier in the editing process and helps organising as it identifies a clearer vision of what you really want as shooting too much footage may be difficult in what you want to include in the video especially when It comes to the editing progress.
• It does not matter about if the song is good or the lyrics, It matters about the visual.
• You do not have to create a narrative based music video all the time; it can be explored through being performance based.

We looked at two visual music videos created by Ben Peters:




N-Dubz - Best Behaviour - Notes on what Ben used to be effective:
The genre Hip-hop/rap is codes and conventions through the mansion, expensive cars, speedboats. The Props have been used that relate to the codes and conventions such as designer clothes showing the wealth and ability to buy these stuff this also goes to jewellery and personalised bags to show they are on a different level and make things seem different.
The shots of the tattoo would seem as relative to hip hop artists as they are mostly to have a tattoo.
Location also places an important relationship to the artist as in this video the exotic area shows yet again the money to be able to go these nice places.




Talay Riley - Humanoid - Notes on what Ben used which was effective:
Lighting electric to go with beat/sound
Shots of lips
Shadow to show something is different
Black background to show darkness maybe through the robotic imagery
Robotic imagery has been portrayed also through the quick mechanical images throughout the video;
 I think this also messes up the audiences mind through these quick flashes.
Dancers are shadowed which shows emphasis on the body movement.
Additionally the editing helps; been shown through the robotic font words within the video and electric robotic outlines on the artists' body.



I researched on his music video related to my genre, hip-hop/ R'n'B directed by Peters which is called Who do you think you are? by Mz Bratt
This has been a stereotypically performance based music video. It is a crowded music video with people in the music video are aged around 18-22 showing some of the targeted audience.
The people are energetic, dancing, smiling, brightly coloured and being mischief which is expected from a performance based music video to be full of energy which this video fulfills.
The grafitti denotes also the genre and this has been shown through the props i.e. hoop earrings and jewellery.



I personally that Ben Peters workshop has been useful as it made me know more in depth for my own
genre codes and conventions as he directs videos of the genre I am using for my own video.
I can understand why he directed the videos the way he did, for example, in the video above it is very performance based and I feel that it was done to portray attitude which is lyrically wanting to be protrayed.
I also learnt to connect to the song, audience, feel my artists goals, objective and to be very creative/ think out of the box.