This music video by Ed Sheeran uses narrative structure throughout the video, and is a circular narrative because the video starts with the end of it. From this point it goes right back to the beginning and the story begins to be told. It's being looked on from another person’s perspective on the girls life, and in doing this we understand the reasons why the girl is doing this. When the story begins, we see the girl waking up on park bench in nothing but the clothes on her back and a sleeping bag. Just from seeing her in this situation, we know she is unfortunate to have ended up this way and isn’t living the life she wants to but she is getting on with it. This puts all the focus on to the protagonist and makes the audience want to know more about the girl and it makes you want to question her about her way of life and how she ended up there. We see shots of her face looking cold and withdrawn, wrapped in her sleeping bag, and we instantly feel sympathy for her as an audience. When the girl is walking up a hill on her own and there is nobody around her creates a sense of panic for the girl. This shows because she starts to look around as if anyone is following her. It soon changes when she looks up to the sky and smiles and then changes to a mid-shot of her opening her arms. This gives the sense of freedom which contrasts with the rest of the video. The rest of the narrative then goes on to show she is working as a prostitute and is also a drug user.
We see her putting her make-up on in layers, trying to look/feel better, but to the men that use her for prostitution, she is just cheap, dirty and unwanted. She begs on the street for money but because of today’s society, they walk straight past her and feel no sympathy.
These are two very dangerous ways of life and it’s so unfortunate that she has come down to this to get by and to get money. Further on in the video, it shows the girl ‘on the job’ working as a prostitute and she is picked up by a client on a corner, this is also a stereotype for prostitutes as they’re often linked with street corners. He’s fallen asleep after they have done what they needed to do and she is left wondering again and again why she is in this situation, but he pays her for her time, and she uses the money to fund her drug habit. We see her handing over her money and in return the drugs are placed in her hand. She goes to a flat and in the empty room, she consumes the drugs she had just bought, and in this room, her life ends. She was took by a way of life that affects so many people in today’s world.
This type of music video is showing a girls life on a time line and what she does to get by. A lot of long shots are used to establish the scene that the girl is in, this helps us to understand that she lives in a normal city is living in a world far away from what she should be. To express the girls emotions and troubles, close-up shots are used to display this in a very sympathetic way, and makes the audience feel for the girl. These types of camera shots gives the audience a cold feeling, and we recognise that she has a hard, dull and colourless life. Not only this but we see the exhaustion in her face and eyes.
The different settings in the video include a park, busy town streets, a grungy flat and the flash hotel where she prostitutes herself. These all signify different emotion levels in her life right now, and that one minute she can feel free and the next she wants to give up on her life because it is that messed up. Displaying these troubles seems like it was effortless and the girl pulls of the part so well. It's even more effective because it is in black and white, which adds depth to the video. Using black and white throughout the video shows that she is in a very dark place, and in the parts where it was filmed in sunlight, the black and white creates high contrast and shows an even bigger effect from shadows and silhouettes.
The target audience for this music video would range from the ages of 15 - 25., It's using strong subject matters and when you get to your mid teens you start to experiment with things such as alcohol, but if your introduced to something by the wrong person and you become familiar with drugs, you know it's going to end bad. The girl couldn't stop her addiction to drugs, and she did whatever she could to get money to fund this habit. People of this age will be familiar and can relate to whats he is doing because it is very common in this generation. If anything it should provide warnings to young people about what it can do to you as a person.
I think it is very well edited and it's definitely effective in the way it uses blurriness to describe how her life is fading. In one particular part there is a close-up shot of her face, and as it zooms out, blur is applied and her face blurs out. it's significant because it gives us a sense that something bad is going to happen, and it does. In another section of the video, we see the girl stood with her back to the camera, and then sat on a public walkway. Her whole life is sped up very fast, from the people walking to the cars just driving by. This shows that shes wasting her life away at a speed that she doesn't even notice and if she doesn't stop now it's only just going to pass by even more. Speeding up the video like this adds wonder to it because watching it you want to know what is going to happen next. The editing of the shots is done in a way that it's telling the story so well, and even with some of the shots being cut so short and some long, we know where the story is going.
The music video style for this is narrative. It's telling a life story throughout the video in stages. As well as this the lyrics are strongly linked to the narrative, and to make this effective it's as if the shots have been specifically placed to act out what lyrics are being sung at that moment. Towards the end of the video when she is waiting to be picked up by a stranger in a car, Ed Sheeran sings 'sells love to another man, it's too cold outside'. This particular lyric explains what her next actions are going to be, she is going to get in the car and sell herself for money. The story is ended by her life ending, and as Ed sings about her being an angel in the sky, who was too worn out for life in the end.
This type of music video is showing a girls life on a time line and what she does to get by. A lot of long shots are used to establish the scene that the girl is in, this helps us to understand that she lives in a normal city is living in a world far away from what she should be. To express the girls emotions and troubles, close-up shots are used to display this in a very sympathetic way, and makes the audience feel for the girl. These types of camera shots gives the audience a cold feeling, and we recognise that she has a hard, dull and colourless life. Not only this but we see the exhaustion in her face and eyes.
The different settings in the video include a park, busy town streets, a grungy flat and the flash hotel where she prostitutes herself. These all signify different emotion levels in her life right now, and that one minute she can feel free and the next she wants to give up on her life because it is that messed up. Displaying these troubles seems like it was effortless and the girl pulls of the part so well. It's even more effective because it is in black and white, which adds depth to the video. Using black and white throughout the video shows that she is in a very dark place, and in the parts where it was filmed in sunlight, the black and white creates high contrast and shows an even bigger effect from shadows and silhouettes.
The target audience for this music video would range from the ages of 15 - 25., It's using strong subject matters and when you get to your mid teens you start to experiment with things such as alcohol, but if your introduced to something by the wrong person and you become familiar with drugs, you know it's going to end bad. The girl couldn't stop her addiction to drugs, and she did whatever she could to get money to fund this habit. People of this age will be familiar and can relate to whats he is doing because it is very common in this generation. If anything it should provide warnings to young people about what it can do to you as a person.
I think it is very well edited and it's definitely effective in the way it uses blurriness to describe how her life is fading. In one particular part there is a close-up shot of her face, and as it zooms out, blur is applied and her face blurs out. it's significant because it gives us a sense that something bad is going to happen, and it does. In another section of the video, we see the girl stood with her back to the camera, and then sat on a public walkway. Her whole life is sped up very fast, from the people walking to the cars just driving by. This shows that shes wasting her life away at a speed that she doesn't even notice and if she doesn't stop now it's only just going to pass by even more. Speeding up the video like this adds wonder to it because watching it you want to know what is going to happen next. The editing of the shots is done in a way that it's telling the story so well, and even with some of the shots being cut so short and some long, we know where the story is going.
The music video style for this is narrative. It's telling a life story throughout the video in stages. As well as this the lyrics are strongly linked to the narrative, and to make this effective it's as if the shots have been specifically placed to act out what lyrics are being sung at that moment. Towards the end of the video when she is waiting to be picked up by a stranger in a car, Ed Sheeran sings 'sells love to another man, it's too cold outside'. This particular lyric explains what her next actions are going to be, she is going to get in the car and sell herself for money. The story is ended by her life ending, and as Ed sings about her being an angel in the sky, who was too worn out for life in the end.
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