Wednesday 4 May 2016

Shawn Mendes – Stitches Detailed Music Video Analysis

Shawn Mendes – Stitches
Detailed Music Video Analysis





Stitches is purely performance based when looking at visuals, however you can tell there's a narrative within the lyrics. When listening to the song alone, we'd refer the style to be similar to that of Ed Sheeran, and to say that this is a pop song, there isn't a certain style or conventions for pop songs to follow. Pop music is a broad category to which every song can be different from another.

A focus point for this song is low key lighting - could be either natural or implemented studio lighting, or perhaps even both. The low key lighting is essential as it refers to being pushed back and being hurt.
It's apparent there is no use of animation or special effects as they would an unnecessary link to the song.

 However, the pace of editing isn't continuous throughout, even though the beat is consistent, the pace of the editing changes; at certain times it's slow and others fast, despite the tempo being nigh consistent. As I've previously stated, there is no standard convention for pop music and so I can't compare this song to another.

Relating to clothing & mise-en-scene, Shawn has gone for a modern-look that consists of a brown leather jacket, grey shirt, slim/skinny jeans & what appear to be similar to VANS footwear. The reason for saying 'modern-ish' is that Shawn is North American where I'm not familiar with their style at this moment.

Towards the end, there's the use of make-up which can associate to the lyrics "I'll be needing stitches", where the make-up is used to represent blood, scars, dirt and a black eye.

Another focus point is the constant use of tracking shots where the camera focuses and literally follows Shawn during the video. Despite the use of tracking shots, there is a variety of angles where the camera focuses on Shawn; from low-angle to high-angle. It's not always tracking shots being used, at certain times, the camera remains still where the shots considered here are: close-ups, mid-shots and distant shots. Even though the camera tracks the artist the majority of the time, the torso is the main focus (Mid tracking shot). The camera never moves away from the artist, this is considered the use of star image.


Throughout, the artist is moving towards the light, the area where the lighting is bright, considered to be the white in this case. Whilst the performance used keeps throwing the artist back, into the darkness, considered to be black. There is a contrast between white & black where white represents freedom and black constitutes the idea of being stuck and gloom.

Monday 25 April 2016

Message to Moderator

Dear Moderator,
My chosen brief was to create a music promo package including music promo video, digipak and advert. I made a promo package for the first artist James Blunt for the genre soft rock. I worked within a group with Beth DaviesAlex Inkster and Craig Bryden to plan, construct and evaluate my coursework for A2 Media Studies.We used the Canon DSLR cameras (model 700d) to record our footage and we used Final Cut Pro X to edit it. I enjoyed constructing our advert and digipak the most as it allowed me to expand and gain new skills with using Photoshop.My blog is best viewed by using the browser "Google Chrome."I hope you enjoy my work.Yours Faithfully,Declan Ryan