Editing Investigation: You're Nobody Till' Somebody Loves You - James Arthur

I decided to observe James Arthur's new song, "You're Nobody Until Somebody Loves You". I counted the cuts in this, which came to 182.

There is a large proportion of the music video which involves shrinking cinematic time, for example, the party/performance starts earlier in the day which is visible through the natural lighting and also by usual everyday happenings, however this fades into nightime where everything is a little looser and 'wild'. In realtime, this would probably take at least 6 hours, however in the music video it took 3 minutes!

There are also points in the movie where cinematic time has been expanded, for example when he first enters the music video towards the stage, alongside some shots of the people dancing at night.

The cuts generally occur when we have taken in enough information to build a picture/understanding of the culture. For example, there are several quick close ups of individuals who contribute to the urban community which are embedded within the video. The cuts are very snappy and allow us to take in the concept without becoming bored. Once we have taken this in, the editor has made it so it cuts to a different representation.

I compared this to the amount of cuts in the first 3 minutes of the film, "stick it" which resulted in 44 cuts.

This shows that music videos often operate at a far faster pace than films, and more cuts are needed. This is something we need to refine and establish to move away from the conventions of film which we studied for AS and more towards that of music videos.