Small Bump - Ed Sheeran
Edward
Christopher Sheeran was born on the 17th February 1991 and is an
English songwriter and producer. He was born in Halifax, and then moved to
Framlingham. He learned to play guitar and starting writing songs at a young
age. He began recording in 2005 and moved to London in 2008 to pursue a music
career. In 2009, inspired by James Morrison, he played in 312 gigs. And in
early 2011 he released his eighth independent extended play. Three months
later, Ed was signed to Asylum Atlantic Records.
Ed broke through
commercially in June 2011, when his debut single "The A Team" debuted
at number three on the UK Singles Chart. Buoyed by the chart success
of the singles "The A Team" and "Lego House", his debut
album, has been certified quadruple platinum in the United Kingdom. In 2012, he
won two BRIT Awards for Best British Solo Artist, and British Breakthrough of
the Year, while "The A Team" also won the Ivor Novello Award for Best
Song Musically and Lyrically.
The
video opens with a few shots of some stereotypical things you would find in a
hospital, there is a purpose for this; to make it clear to the audience that he
is in a hospital right from the start of the video. It then cuts to a seating area,
which is obviously the waiting room. The shot movement after the few shots at
the very beginning is one slow fluent motion up and down a corridor, tracking
the artist all the way whilst it goes up and down. The camera moves up the
corridor closer to the artist to a close up and then slowly further away, until
finally back to the artist to end with a close up, which is sticking to the
rule of thirds.
The
editing for this music video is unusual; the video starts with a series of cuts
at the start to establish to the audience where the video is taking place, but
it soon cuts to the main shot, which is kept throughout the rest of the video,
which is the fluent shot with an extremely long shot duration which lasts
throughout the video.
Special
effects are used in the video, these consist of as the camera is going up and
down the corridor you see people coming into the hospital with injuries or for
other reasons but they fade away as if they were ghosts, this fade is to
replicate the passing of time, and to still keep the focus and attention on the
artist.
The
clothing of the artist is kept basic, nothing stands out in particular, and no
bright colours are used at all. The reasoning behind this is because the artist
is not promoting his image and what he stands for, but instead his music. Also,
because of the bland dress sense the audience is more focused on the artist’s
performance and voice as they are not focusing on anything in particular going
on in the video, which is another reason for the video being kept extremely
basic. The clothing is stereotypical of that of a teenager; jeans, hoody,
trainers. This is to show that the artist is young, or maybe to still leave the
artist room for change when he progresses, as he is still a fairly new artist
to the industry.
The
type of video is a mixture of performance and concept. The concept is
consequent of the fact that the artist is singing about a baby on it’s way, he
is in a hospital waiting room which shows that the video has a concept there.
However the video is also just focused on the artist the whole time, which also
makes it evident that it is performance based.
The
relationship between the lyrics and visuals is contradictory, nothing the
artist says relates to the visuals.
The
relationship between the music and visuals at the start for the first eight
seconds is illustrative, after these eight seconds the rest of it is
contradictory because of the long one shot duration which is used throughout
the video.
Reece Smith
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