Ed Sheeran - The A Team

Ed Sheeran's video for his song 'The A team' focuses on the narrative of a young girl who is homeless and what she has to do to try and get herself some money, the whole video is shot in black and white and gives it quite a dark feel to the video because of the narrative story he is trying to show.

The beginning of the video starts with no music other than what sounds like a bird, this gives you an idea that it could be early through the morning that it is set. The use of close-up of the woman shows the emotion she has and how she is crying. The camera zooms out and we see a other woman lying down obviously dead, the effect of showing this first shows the end of the story at the beginning gives the audience an insight of what they are about to see ends in a bad way. The use of the close-up of the girl who is lying down is quite powerful image as her eyes are open you don't actually know if she is dead, the face then blurs out and the music video starts to go to her life and how she lives, this is when the music starts. With the music starting when we see the image of her lying on a park bench shows the music is about to describe her life and thats what the audience is about to see.

The image of her lying of a park bench automatically shows that she is homeless, its quite a strong image of her on the bench as it shows she is a young girl and she is alone. The focus of her on the bench makes the audience want to know what happens to her and why she is shown to be dead on the first few seconds of the video. We see a medium close-up of her face when she is in her sleeping bag showing her emotion on her face as soon as she wakes up, the shot showing her smudged make-up shows she is tired and is living rough because of her appearance. 

The camera follows her feet walking which shows the story the video is following is about her. The shot is effective because it shows that she is walking down a busy shopping street and she is wearing a sleeping bag and her appearance looks rough because of the rips in her tights. Making you feel sympathetic towards the girl the song is talking about, the use of the narrative story makes you think a lot more about what the artist is trying to show with his music. This shot creates the image that she doesn't belong in the place she is because of her image and she sticks out compared to people she is surrounded by. 

The image of her sitting on the street makes the audience have sympathy for the girl we are following, the people who are seen walking past of made to be in fast forward which gives the sense that she is sat there for a long period of time without anyone helping her. The effect of the traffic made faster also signifies her life going in slow motion and that she is helpless and doesn't know what to do with herself. We begin to feel even more sorry for the girl when the camera moves to a close-up of her face showing the emotion she is feeling, the close-up shows her crying it's quite an upsetting image of her on the streets as she looks quite young and doesn't really know how to help her self get out of the situation she is. 

We several shots of her in a bathroom putting make-up and wearing something different to what we have seen her wearing in the previous shots. This is then followed by a shot of her trying to flag down a car because she has turned to prostitution, the image is quite strong of the car headlights on her face as it shows her emotion of being scared and you can tell she is thinking about what she is about to do to herself. The story begins to link to the beginning of the music video of her lying dead and gives the audience an insight of what she gets herself into for her to die. We see more shots which prove she has gone into prostitution of her in a hotel room with a man, taking money out of his pocket and then a shot of her in bed showing the guilt on her face and how ashamed she is of herself. 

The image of the hands is something we want to show in our music video because of the use of body language shown in relationships. This is a strong image of the two different hands exchanging money for drugs and the story of the video starts to come to an end when we see her starting to take drugs again linking back to the beginning of the video it's clear how she dies. The next shots show her taking the drugs and the audience now understand the reality she is living in. The build up of her taking drugs and knowing what is about to happen to her gives some suspense of what is about to happen as the audience already know. 

The video ends with the image of the girl in the sky with the sun shining, this symbolises her in heaven and the audience now know that she has died. The video for 'The A Team' is a good video to link with the video we want to make as we want to show the video following a young girl on the beach and flashbacks of her relationship. We want our whole video to be shot in black and white because of the effect it gives that she is dark place and that she is thinking about her life and what happened in her relationship.