Ed Sheeran’s first music video for his single ‘The A-Team’ is a narrative based video, with a story line about a girl who prostitutes for money so she can buy drugs, and sleeps on the street. This is quite a controversial video and Ed only features in his video once when he gives money to the girl on the street. This video is used as a promotional tool to show Ed as an artist who cares about his music and it’s message, opposed to him trying to promote his celebrity through his music video. This helps him stay relatable to his audience as he stays an ordinary person to his audience. The video has clips of a similar length, which are reasonably long so that they give a good sense of surrounding- showing the streets and the bench she wakes up on, further allowing the audience to follow the story of the video. Blur transitions are used in between clips so that one blurs out and the other comes into focus, possibly linking to blurry vision from alcohol or drugs. There are a few times that the visuals match the lyrics, for example the lyrics say “she doesn’t want to go outside tonight” as the visuals show her putting on her make-up as she gets ready to go out prostituting. Another when the lyrics say “her face seems slowly, sinking, wasting. Crumbling like pastry” as the visuals show her beginning to break down and cry. However the video doesn’t often show visuals to directly match the lyrics, as the the visuals throughout the video allow an understanding of the song through the story they tell.
The video is in black and white throughout, showing a symbolism of the darkness the girl feels and the severity of the situation she’s in and it seems to translate that feeling across to the audience. The video is set mostly on the street, with the girl in tattered and broken clothes, wrapped in a blanket. This shows a basic use of mise-en-scene yet is very effective as it makes it so much more realistic. I will look into using a good sense of location in my music video as I thought it was very effective in this video and allowed a good narrative.
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