music video research - Jamie T ~ Sheila

artist/ song: - Jamie T ~ Sheila 


Narrative/ including techniques used: -
we see a man walking by the river walking by the river Thames in London, he is telling the story of 3 individuals and their tragedies, including his daughter, sheila, who fell into the river when she was drunk, hence the chorus "sheila goes out with her mate stella, it gets poured all over her fella... drunk she stumbles down by the river, screams calling London, none of us heard her comin' i guess the carpet weren't rolled out." And we assume that the other characters are jack, sheilas boyfriend and her friend Georgina, the song links all of them and their bad backgrounds together. at the end, we discover it was her father, who with his flowers places them on the memorial, by the place where she stumbled into the river and died.

the video is unique because we don't understand who the character actually is until the end of the video, this created tension and makes us listen to the song and absorb the lyrics and their message more so we can get a clear understanding of the characters and who they are in contrast with the song. the video is interesting and intrigues the audience to as what is going on, and by the ending we understand and the pieces fall into place. the fact that we are following the man as he walks along the river, gives us a sense of mystery, its following up to something that will appear at the end, the way he walks is in time with the music, he also mimes the lyrics to the song, like he is almost telling the story and the words are coming from his mouth.

the camera angles used are mostly close up of the mans face while he is walking and miming the words, this way we can see the emotion and how he expresses the words he is saying in his facial expression, for example at the very beginning he looks angry, supposedly because his daughter has had a fatal death which could of been stopped. there are also shots from the side, showing how the man is walking alone and is isolated from everyone else around him because it is such a lonely and hard place to be around.