Analysing music promo - Ed Sheeran - ''You need me man i dont need you''

     
The lyrics themselves I believe refer to the writer of one of the songs that my artist ‘Ed Sheeran’ has produced. I know this for a fact due the lyrics in which he sings saying ‘I write my own tunes and I write my own versus’ and moves on to later sing ‘call yourself a single writer but your just bluffing, name on the credits and you didn’t right nothing’, I believe he is referring to a writer who has used maybe part of a song that he has written for Ed as a clam to fame, and that maybe he means that a lot of artists out there are not really 'artists' because they dont write the songs themself.  The narrative of the song is the fact that I believe he has dropped the writer and that is why he sings ‘you need man, I don’t need you’, stating the fact that he has moved on from the writer and maybe the writer has told him how Ed needs him.


This is a screen grab off his video.

What they have done in the video in order to portray the lyrics of the song is by using a single person at the start of the video to do sign language to the song itself, this I believe really put the message across to the audience simply but most effectively due to the movements of the man doing the sign language. Also they used a person dressed as a quire boy to fit into the song where Ed sings ‘I am still a quire boy’ there is a young quire boy in the shot.

The narrative of this particular song is not abstract but however it’s not an obvious or abstract to the advance. The reason why I say it is not abstract is due to the fact that there are no strange object that don’t go with the lyrics at all instead they use a person doing sign language where as in 'Lady Gaga' often uses props that don’t go at all with the lyrics. The reason that it is not obvious to the audience is due to the fact that lyrics are the only way of being able to relate it to the narrative there is nothing directly in the video.
The theme of this song is of a particular story where Ed is basically going through why he doesn’t need the right; in the song it goes through the reasons why he does not need him.

Conventions of a music promo

Camera Shots: 
Music videos tend to use many long shots, close ups, mid shots. this is to create emphisis on the artist, band (in my case), peoples emotions and certain locations. Close ups are not only used to show emotion in the artist or actors face but to reflect certain words in the song.


Camera movement:
The movement of the camera is used to follow and trace the artist or band. Camera movements involve tilts, tracking, crane shots and pans. All very common in music videos.


Mis-ene-scene:
This refers to the arrangement of performers, costume, props on stage or in a scene for a production of a music video or any other media text. Mis-ene-scene puts importance on the representation of something, for examaple 'My Chemical Romance' there video 'Welcmome to the Black perade', there opening scene is on a hospital bed with someone dying. This represents death and dark thoughts which portraits within the song. This is just one example of the representation that the Mis-ene-sene brings. 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDWgsQhbaqU


Editing: 
Jump cuts is the predominant editing technique used in media videos. This is because this allows a sudden change from one scene to another. Transitions such as fade and dissolve are very common in music videos as they use different effects to cuts.


Lightining:
Some music videos are black and white (like 'Welcome to the black perade) which help emphisise a particular mood and some videos have artificial lighting which put the artist or band in an enhanced look.


Sound:
Sound is mainly the vocals or the song but in some cases there is narrative to a story being told by the song. A good example of this is Micheal Jackson - Thriller, when in this case its been made into a short film.


Props:
These are vital to aiding to add to the scene and create significance on particular objects or people.


Costume: 
Costume is very important to any music video. It goes with the scenes in the song anhd reflects the genre of the song. Costume is an important convention to a music promo because it has a slight influence on how the viewers will dress because they will use some celebritys as role models.


With the band we have picked to go the genre which is a Indie/rock, is an iconic one with some great music videos to get good ideas and conventions off such as : 

• Kings of Leon - Your Sex is on Fire - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF0HhrwIwp0&ob=av2n
• Munford and sons - Little lion Man - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7bHe--mp1g&ob=av2e
• Arctic Monkeys - When The Sun Goes Down - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBbk9IjRdO0

What we learned from our audience feedback.

I believe that we have learnt a great deal by showing our promo to different types of people. I think it is important to get a variety of peoples opnions in this matter because you have to see what works well and doesnt work well and shgould be rectified. What we learnt from our feedback was that our promo was good and solid but there was room for improvements, for example to start off with when we showed our promo to people there was not enough effects and transactions, so naturally we got some feedback from our media student peers that we should try and add some in, to mix it up a little bit. We also were told to try different types of shots, and then getting insperation from certain music promos in the past such as ''missing andy's - im made in england'' we created a series of shots that spelt out the words in time with the music.

This was the end product that made it into our promo. We are very happy with this series of shots becuase i managed to get the writing coming up in a sequence that co-insides with the music, and turned out to be very effective. 


This shot is because of our audience feedback and we are happy that our feedback has been able to help us make our promo better, this therefore reinforces the idea of feedback.

Audience feed back No.4

With our tutor being able to give us feedback we think that this benifited us a lot, he made some good points and we took it all on board.

Audience feed back No.3

Another video of us researching what people thought of our promo. We found that the peers had a lot to say because they are media students as well, this benifits our audience feedback because they know what its like to make one and know what there talking about.

Audience feed back No.2

This is one of my peers Ashley Firth also giving feedback on the promo. Again we found this very useful to us and took everything they said under consideration.

Audience feed back No.1

This is one of my peers Harvey Ewen giving his thoughts on our promo and what worked well and didnt work well. We found this very beneficial towards helping us make an all round better promo.