Case Study 3

ED SHEERAN- A TEAM

Directed by Ruskin Kyle

Released- 22/04/2010

The video focuses on a young girl in her early 20’s who is homeless trying to find ways to make money. The song itself talks about the struggle she’s going through describing the emotion and feeling. Hence the title name of the song ‘A Team’ describing the class A drugs which she is taking.

Unlike the first video I looked at ‘Ed Sheeran’ only features in the video once, creating a different effect and both tell different stories. There is one main character and has extras featured throughout the video but the focus still remains on her and the story that is supposed to be told. The music video simply starts introducing the main character and follows her journey throughout. Few techniques were used through the video. There is a clear structure to the video which is beginning, middle, end and has a fluid flow. The video begins with a close up shot of the main character introducing her character, then goes into showing how she lives and the journey she takes, lastly it ends showing where her journey has left her.

The theme is clearly understandable and a continuous flow was carried out. This was able to be done with the various shots that were used. A lot of close ups were used to capture her emotion. However not a wide range of camera angles were used and stuck to using long shots and medium. The long shots were used to show the audience her surroundings. A brief medium shot was also used when Ed Sheeran made an appearance in the shot. Special effects were not the highlight of this music video unlike ‘small bump’ however in both the videos they both used the fast forwarding effect. It simply reflected how time was passing by her while she was just at standstill.

The whole video was shot in Black and White which connotes the sadness and pain she’s going through, making the  audience empathetic to the story been told. The locations used were places that the general public pass daily such as parks, trains station and seeing homeless on the street. Few props were included but the props used were in sync with lyrics. Costumes/make-up, were very basic.

‘And in a pipe we fly to the motherland’ for example at this point in the video we see the young girl taking drugs, this just reflects how the lyrics were in sync with the character even though there is no lip synching. Close up shot were used to capture the girl taking the drugs and how she was feeling at the point. An extreme close up was used to show the girl purchasing drugs which makes the scene more effective. The shots/techniques varied between close up, extreme close ups and medium shots throughout.  

A mature target audience would have a better understanding of the video and realise what the video is trying to portray without having the artist featuring doing lip synching.

After viewing the video features I may include would be to have my main focus on a certain issue or story that is supposed to portrayed, also to capture emotions to make an overall effective video.