Music video analysis

Ed Sheeran's 'Shape of You' is one of the played songs this year and as it is so recent, it is easy to analyse what techniques used for it to attract such a large target audience. First of all, Ed Sheeran as a well known artist is known for having such prominant songs that always have the right music video for it. His star iconography is to be quite different with the type of song he brings out, however, still remaining in the same type of guidelines as the song will be about a female. 

The storyline to his music videos are one thing that Ed Sheeran can definitely be recognised for as his main audience will know that they are usually things that ordinary people can do, allowing many members of his audience to be able to relate on a more personal level, an example of this is Ed Sheeran 'Thinking Out Loud'. The whole music video is based around a boxing gym that he and a girl go to. Eventually they become friends and start to get closer. The first half of the video is focused on the female character in the gym as lyrics are sung about her to show the audience that she is the other main character in this music video. In these first scenes she is wearing blue. the connotation of blue is power, she is wearing blue to show her independence and that she is a driven and powerful individual. As the video continues and the two of them start to get closer, they both seem to be wearing grey jumpers to show that they are on equal levels and the fact that she is not as independent as she was before. In addition at one stage Ed Sheeran was wearing blue boxing gloves, then she was wearing blue boxing gloves. This is to show the audience the exchange in power in their rekatuinship as they become one another's training partners.

Using this music video, Goodwin's theory of the relationship between lyrics and visuals. The whole video is complimentary to the lyrics. As the song is narrative, it is important for the lyrics and visuals to be complimentary because it allows the audience to follow along and stay completely intrigued with what is going on. In addition, the video is also amplification of the lyrics and meaning of the song, as it is titled 'Shape of You' and the main female character has a great physique. In addition there is also an example of relationship between music and visuals as Ed Sheeran is hitting the punching bag at the same time as the beat. When it comes to the editing of this video, all the scenes at the beginning are quite long winded and only cut so often. However, comparing this to near the end as Ed Sheeran was about to have his final fight, there was more jumpy shots and more movement from the camera to add to the tension of his fight. Finally, the genre of this music and music video is pop.