Being There

Watch the first fif­teen sec­onds of the video for Rihanna’s song “what’s my name?” (fea­tur­ing Drake), and you will see an expert bit of visual sto­ry­telling. Imme­di­ately, place is set: New York City. Inside ten sec­onds the rest of story is estab­lished. Drake is in a “bodega,” or cor­ner store, when he sees Rihanna enter. With some quick cut­ting the ten­sion of sex­ual attrac­tion is set up. The rest of the video unfolds from there:

The inter­est­ing thing about this video is that it is set in New York but nei­ther Drake nor Rihanna is a native New Yorker. Rihanna is from Bar­ba­dos, and Drake is from Canada, but their affair (on the screen, at least) is a New York story: hot, imme­di­ate, and fun. That pas­sion is what makes New York a great city. It is the new New York­ers that give the city its vibrancy, its cre­ativ­ity, and its effer­ves­cent type of unex­pected beauty.

On a tech­ni­cal note, I would wager that this video was made using a Dig­i­tal SLR that takes hi-def video. See the shal­low depth of field slip in and out of focus when the sub­jects move?