Emeli Sande – Heaven music video analysis

Emeli Sande – Heaven – Hashim Shah – Media

In the music video to ‘Heaven’ by Emeli Sande, most of the camera angles are directed at her. They hone in on her face and other faces of people that she might encounter on a day to day basis. At various stages through the music video, new people are introduced and are followed throughout the video. As the video starts the people look quite sad and are possibly in unprivileged circumstances. The camera angles are also directed towards their faces, with the intention of showing their glum facial expressions.

Throughout the video whenever Emeli Sande appears in the video, she is miming the words to her song whilst sometimes using hand movements to express how she feels towards the song.

As the video progresses, their facial expressions begin to lighten up, and the background’s become brighter. Previously, the backdrops to the people were of dark streets / street lamps / beds in the street. As the video progresses the, backdrops are of the sky during the day, and the cameras are below the persons face, and the camera is pointing up to make it seem as if the person is in power. The reason for the backdrop being the sky is that the song theme throughout the song is ‘heaven’.

Towards the last quarter / third of the video, the people in the video do begin to mime the words to the song that is playing in the background. The song is at its pinnacle point, and all the musical instruments are playing at the same time. This is in sync with the morale of the people and their facial expressions.

There are not many special effects used as they are not needed to explain the story. This highlights how simple, yet effective the video is whilst portraying the story of the people in the video.

*insert screenshots from music video*