Textual Analysis

Small Bump - Ed Sheeran

Edward Christopher Sheeran was born on the 17^th 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