Ed Sheeran Music Video Analysis

Ed Sheeran Give Me Love

The music video has many elements of a narrative video. The most common theme used theme throughout a lot of narrative videos is love and this video has a narrative theme of love throughout the video hence the title ‘Give Me Love’.

The target audience for this video are the younger generation between the ages of 15-25 which is also similar to the age of the singer, Ed Sheeran, and also his fans that listen and buy his music. The song is about love and about a person who can’t forget his old love. The music video appeals mostly to females because the video though it may be about a man or women, the video itself speaks mostly towards females.

The video starts with a female in a middle shot that appears to have an arrow in her neck, surrounded by blood which gives the connotation of death or injury. Then it carries on to the next shot, another middle shot of a police officer walking forwards which adds more to the connotations of there being death and the police being the bearer of news with loud sirens surrounding him. This makes you want to find out more about the girl and what has happened as the video starts from the end and then goes backwards to start from the beginning and show what has happened and this also makes you feel sympathetic towards the girl as you think that a big tragedy or something happened that ended up in her dying.

There is then a cut to a shot of a couple kissing which is a very common theme within a lot of pop videos. It then cuts to a medium shot of female looking very sad and depressed. She is dressed in a white vest and has blonde hair which is mostly used to show innocence and purity, which is stereotypically what a young female character is supposed to look like in a pop video. The low key lighting throughout the video creates a gritty feel and the positioning of the young girl in the long shots, by herself, gives the impression that she is very lonely and isolated from the world. This creates a sense of realism which shows that there really are people like that in the world and that breaks the conventions of what is normally shown and associated with in a music video that is shows the theme of love.

There are two shots which show a variety of tools which could potentially be shown to show that there could be a tragedy happening later on in the video because those tools are very dangerous. It then shows a shot of two wooden model’s, a man and a women, holding hands and embracing each other which again shows the theme of love which is shown consistently throughout the video but then the way it is shown in the video isn’t what would normally be shown in a pop video to show the theme of love.

The video then cuts back to a bunch of medium shots showing what looks like the girl trying to scratch or hurt her back and then is shown to be pulling a feather out of her back. The feather is white again showing the theme of innocence but is covered in red blood going back to the idea of a sort of tragedy or injury. It then cuts to a long shot of the girl standing facing away from the camera so you can’t see her face and it shows her standing in the spotlight with a pair of wings. The low key lighting surrounding the spotlight that shines on the girls’ wings makes the shot more clear and shows the audience that she has wings. The wings are white and represent an angel and purity again showing the idea of innocence.

It then cuts to a medium shot of the girl carving arrows with the tools that were shown earlier, and then is shown in a full shot of firing an arrow at one of the women walking past her window. At this point we get the idea that the main lead is cupid as she has wings and is carrying a bow and arrow, also the fact that when she shoots her arrow into people they find love with another. This relates back to the narrative as cupid is a connotation of love. The song is based around love so this meets the audience’s expectation of a video based around a song which is about love, however this shows a more darker and wicked side of love, as the low lighting gives the video almost a dull, sinister feeling and the protagonist herself is shown to be melancholy which plays with the stereotypes in pop genre which shows that love is meant to be a happy, euphoric feeling.

There are then a few shots of people being hit with an arrow and frantically falling in love with the first person they see which lives up to the story of cupid’s arrows. It then shows the girl waiting for a train and then is cut to show her on the train making the audience aware that she has boarded the train and is probably going on to carry on with her job of being cupid.

There is then various close up and medium shots of the people who have been shot by cupid’s arrow kissing showing the more obvious theme of love which is normally shown in a pop music video with the theme of love, but with the dark lighting it seems more intense. However it is then cut to show the girl standing on top of a building perhaps suggesting the power and dominance she has. It also gives the impression that maybe the girl is a bit lost. Even though in this shot she is shown to be wearing white and supposed to be angelic the dark lighting and dark clouds contrasts with this and it creates a feeling of her somehow being forceful and somewhat sombre.

As the song reaches the climax and the pace of the music starts to become more fast the video cuts to showing close ups of people dancing and the girl now stabbing people and them falling in love with the first person they see. There is a blue tint to the lighting now and it makes the video seem more gritty and more harsh. This creates a sense of truth and authenticity which you wouldn’t normally associate with a video about love.

The editing in this sequence is fast and hectic feeling like the time is going fast and like its being fast forwarded, and also keeping with the fast tempo and music of the song.

Once the music starts to slow down the fast pace the video is moving at starts to slow down too and there is a close shot showing the female holding an arrow to her throat and then it cuts back to how the video started with all the police cars going off, and the same police officer shows in the beginning. The end shot is the same as how the video started with the girl with an arrow in her neck except this time her eyes open and the arrow disappears followed by a blurred image of the officer looking at the girl, and is shown in her point of show showing us what she sees, suggesting that she has found love, showing that steadiness and stability has been restored.

By Farhana Kadir