Research 5: James Blunt - Stay the Night (Video 3)

The following is a music video that I found whilst browsing the net. It includes a lot of shots and angles which may be appropriate to the genre of music that I am interested in working with:

This video is located on a beach (presumably in California, but not necessarily). It doesn't follow a storyline as such, but takes random clips from other scenes and locations at relevant points in the music, making this one of my favourite music videos to watch, its just my preference. There has also been a lot of manual editing done after editing, with blurs, colour correction, and a broad use of lens flares.

I will talk about a few screen grabs picturing the shots that caught my eye the most:

This screen grab is a close-up with the depth of field focussed on only the bright part of the picture where the light is reflecting off the guitar. This means that everything else is out of focus and is more interesting to look at as the strings and arm are blurred as the musician strums. I am looking to use a fair amount of blur and shallow depth of field as it adds almost another dimension to the video, and lets your audience focus on what you want them to focus on, hence potentially, done right, a greater meaning can be portrayed to the audience as opposed to shooting with everything in focus.

There are two things in this image I am going to talk about. The first is how we have a medium shot of the musician, with the top half of his torso in picture, but clearly showing that he is holding the guitar shown in the previous shot. (Again depth of field is used here, where only his head is in perfect focus, the background, and the rest of his body, including guitar, are out of focus).
The second is how there has been a slim blue lens flare added across the shot. This effect is used extensively throughout the video and is there to add a bit of feel to the image, a sense of location, emphasising the glare from the setting sun.

Here I have taken a screen grab of a very fast edited shot, on screen for no longer than half a second. It is there to emphasise a key beat in the music as well as being interesting to look at. All of the guitar, strings and hand are in focus for this shot, emphasising the fact that it is there for a reason.
All good music videos must include these types of shots as it keeps the audience hooked and keeps the music flowing, and less separated. (a music video made from long cuts without any short cuts in between longer cuts is not interesting and will get boring, although this does depend on the genre of the music video).

I chose to grab this shot because of the colour and the blur. I like the fact that the two people are sitting, yet the glare makes it look like they are sitting on nothing, which is quite cool. There is only one part of the shot which is in focus and that is the bottom left corner of the sea, everything is out of focus, but everything that is there is distinguishable.
This shot is very monochromatic, with only colours associated with sunset are included. This fits the story line of the song and is appropriate to the genre.

This screen grab I took has a sort of consistent Gaussian blur over the whole image. The point of interest, the setting Sun shining through the gap made by his arm is the real reason that I chose this screen grab. It not only adds a nice, suitable effect to the shot, but pretty  much sums up the video by itself; a guy singing, obviously to someone, on a beach with their friends, the sun is setting and he asks her to stay with him. This shot was very thought through, with suitable location, and a very specific and short window to get the shot right first time.