Video Analysis:

The Script - 'For The First Time'

The Script's video 'For The First Time' uses the lyrics and relates them to what we can see throughout the whole song. The video tells a story whilst we are embraced by the lyrics. The camera constantly shots from the band singing to the couple.

At the beginning of the video, there is a narrative part which lasts for thirty seconds. This sets the scene for the rest of the video as we see a girl crying. In the opening shot we see a postcard with the Statue of Liberty on, immediately assuming that she is in America. The contrast of her strong Irish accent and the New York postcard leads us to believe she is away from home. We can assume, before hearing any part of the song, that the lyrics will relate to her. As the beginning scene draws to a close, her last words that she writes on the postcard to her family is "Please don't miss me too much".

As the music begins, the band immediately begin to sing. The gentleness of the background music, which we can recognise to be a piano at first, reflects the mood of the girl and the lyrics begin to also reflect what we can see. We hear the lyrics "She's all laid up in bed with a broken heart" as we see the girl laying in bed, crying. With the video complimenting the lyrics, it makes us understand the meaning of the song easily, without having to listen carefully to the words. The angle of the camera makes the scene seem more realistic, the way the camera is at an angle looking down at the girl, it emphasises the fact that she is upset. The slow pace of the music with the sound of a piano in the background, resembles the sadness behind the meaning of the song and the lyrics that are being sung.

At 0.37 seconds, the video cuts to the band and there is a black and white close up front view shot of the main singer. This makes the video seem personal to the lead vocalist and helps to establish the artist. The black and white moving image separates the band from the rest of the video. "Trying to make it work but man these times are hard", we hear this as we are seeing the band, the dark background makes it seem cold and as if the couple are having hard times. The camera is constantly close up to the main member of the band, this shows that he is in control of the lyrics and is important to the song. We begin to see what we hear, for example, when there is a clear recognition of the guitar being played, we can see the lead guitarist strumming to the song. Another example is whilst we can hear the piano clearly, we get a close up shot of one of the band members fingers playing the piano. This adds realism to the video and makes up believe in the music as we can actually see it is happening as well as just hearing it. As the shots go back to the couple, from the shot of the band, we immediatly get a close up of the girls partner, showing his dominance in the relationship. We can tell that the girl is hurt as she draws away from him, we see this clearly in an over the shoulder shot. This shot allows us to see the her reaction, and she is looking innocently at her partner. At this point in the video, 1.05, we hear "And we don't know how we got into this mess it's a gods test". This is stating the position of their relationship at that moment in time. As previously said, the lyrics relate to the visuals quite often in this music video.

The visuals help to illustrate the lyrics. As 'The Script' sing the lyrics, "drinking old cheap bottles of wine, sit talking up all night, saying things we haven't for a while" we see exactly what we hear. This is good as in music video when the lyrics are not illustrated we try to build a visual image to the story of the lyrics in out heads. We see the man drinking a bottle of wine, and the couple sitting up talking. At 1.30 we get an extreme close up of the girls eyes as she is crying, this amplifies the lyrics. There are long cuts in this video as this reflects the slow pace music and highlights the sadness behind not just what we see and hear. As the pace of the music picks up a bit during an instrumental section of the song, we see a different shot of the man on his bike in New York city followed by a black and white image of the couple holding hands. This suggests that it is looking back at the past and how things used to be.

At 1.45, we see the girl looking up at the sun between the trees, and there is a clear reflection of the sun on the camera lense. This adds realism to the video but also enhances the sadness. In the middle of the video, there are quick cuts between the girl out in the streets taking photos, the band, the man on his motorbike, and passers by. This shows that there is a lot going on in that moment in time, and as previously in the video, these shots are accompanied by the lyrics "man these times are hard". The next image we see is of the couples faces in the same shot, however they are not together, there faces have been layered so we can see her over the top of him. I think that this part of the video has a lot of meaning and is important as it shows their separateness yet they are still together in the image. There are many different camera angles used throughout the shooting of the band. For the majority of the time, we are seeing close ups of the main singer, however there are low angle shots which give the band dominance and control over the song. We also get medium shots of the band so that we can get a sense of their body languages.

As this song is not fast or upbeat, the fading transition is used to go from cut to cut so that they do not look to blunt or sharp. We see a close up shot of the man holding lots of money after selling his motorbike, followed by a clover keyring which is a symbol of Ireland, this relates back to the beginning narrative part of the video when the girl is writing home to Dublin. This is builds slight tension to the ending of the video as we are not sure if this is to resemble an upcoming important part. The song ends like the beginning with a narrative part of the couple talking. A shot reverse shot is used here as we see the girl and then the man as they are having a conversation. As well as hearing their conversation the slow music is still playing in the background with the non-diegetic sound of the guitar.