Research and Planning - (Ed Sheeran-The A team)

Ruskin Kyle (director of The A team) has illustrated the meaning of the Ed sheerans lyrics into his video. You can see an obvious connection between both the lyrics and video. The video tells a story of young homeless woman whose drug addiction is leading her to her death. As we hear the lyrics whilst watching the music video we understand what is happening which makes the video more powerful and moving. The entire video is filmed in black and white which gives a dull effect which could possibly reflect the characters life. Furthermore I feel that if the video was in colour it would not be as moving, serious or powerful as perhaps desired. The lighting of the video is kept very natural to keep the story as realistic as possible however it seems that lighting sort of shows positive and negative parts of the person’s life. For example when the woman wakes up and embraces her surroundings (around the opening of the video) the lighting is bright which suggests positivity and happiness but as the video progresses it seems to get darker and more negative. As well as the simplicity of lighting there are very minimal digital effects again to keep the video realistic. There is one special effect used which is the increased speed of people and traffic passing the woman as she remains still (used to show the world passing her by and the lack of people that care) Mise-en-scene is used to create the look of a homeless character. We can firstly see this through the clothing, appearance and possessions of the character; we can clearly see that the she has very few possessions apart from a sleeping bag indicating little money and no home, her appearance is untidy and uncared for such as her hair and smudged makeup which also indicates she has been sleeping rough for a while. The location of the opening shot is the character asleep on a park bench which immediately makes the viewers aware she has no home. Sound and lighting create the image of morning (bright light and birds singing) this could be seen as creating a feeling of hope and positivity.