Rhodes political rapper S.C.A.M is causing controversy within ANC ranks. In his song “Repetition” he blasted the ANC and in particular ANC Youth League President Julius Malema, by calling him a dimwit. He has sinced received threats from Malema’s office asking him to tone down his language.
BACKGROUND
We were both nervous. It was our first real news assignment. When story ideas were pitched during the tutorial, our story seemed to be the least newsworthy and this was reflected by the fact that it needed a vote to determine whether we could go ahead and film or not. When it was chosen we breathed a sigh of relief but at the same time we did not want to be the tag along news package which just made up the numbers. At the end of the tutorial my partner and I looked at each other confidently but deep down we knew this was going to be no easy challenge.
Automatically we wondered where to interview S.C.A.M, and we decided that the best location was RMR because we knew pictures of him rapping behind the microphone would provide appealing visuals. It seemed like a perfect idea, a rapper in studio, but many obstacles awaited us. We were only able to get a small recording studio, and the humming of the lights made us paranoid about the projection of our sound. We had little space to manoeuvre in, and we had to be creative with the little we had. Being relatively new to the whole experience we struggled at first, but the more minutes we recorded the more likely it seemed we would piece together an effective and entertaining news package.
When we asked S.C.A.M to do the various sequences it was very awkward. Constantly asking him to repeat this and do that. But when S.C.A.M saw the final package with all the sequences tactfully conjoined, he seemed impressed and began to understand and appreciate the work that goes into filming a package.
One of the clips we were forced to leave out due to time constraints: S.C.A.M attacking Julius Malema
Our interviews with Oscar Dondashe and Dr Hoeane were interesting and intriguing. We had previously established a rapport with both interviewees making the interview process a lot smoother. Both speakers were more than willing to express their views elaborately.
Dr Hoeane from the Politics Department puts everything into perspective during his interview.
All of a sudden the impossible job seemed doable. We had our star in the studio and our interviewees provided us with interesting content. All that remained was finishing off the ‘masterpiece’.
No artist wants to be interrupted whilst putting together the final touches to his masterpiece. But our case was different. As we worked away in the early night, we received a call from a friend informing us that S.C.A.M would be performing one song and one song only, at the Nelson Mandela Hall Dinner. We hurriedly packed our equipment in hope of catching some good visuals. But to capture a good sequence when somebody only performs one song is no easy task. We found ourselves running around in front and behind the rapper trying to catch different angles to put a sequence together. We were also concerned after the song was complete that we did not have all the visuals for the sequence we wanted. However when we uploaded our footage we were pleasantly surprised by what we had and were actually able to compile a one and a half minuet rap video.
Watch a clip of the rap performance at Nelson Mandela Hall Dinner.
Watching our final package during the news bulletin gave us great satisfaction. It seemed all the hard work and running around with equipment had paid off. It’s strange however that you work for so long to produce only three minutes of footage.