Researching videos and analysing them!

I am going to anaylise a few videos, but first i was very interested in cold play's video for 'The Scientist'. 

The audience for this music video would be mainly male dominated who are teenage and in their 20's, who are fans of the soft pop rock music that Coldplay create. The video shows how the band don't aim for massive productions like various other artists and instead try to intrigue the audience with twists in the narrative and unique displays. 

I think the video genre is mainly abstract is because, the band have chose to shoot the entire video so that when the audience watch it, it is in reverse with the end of the narrative at the beginning of the video and the beginning of narrative at the end of the video. I think that this has been used to keep the audiences interest in the video and it also makes it different to other Coldplay music videos however other aspects used still makes it recognisable as a Coldplay music video. The video is also a performance because Chris Martin is lip syncing whilst looking down the camera lens throughout a lot of the video whilst the narrative unravels and the video is also narrative because there is a story which unfolds throughout the video although this only becomes clear at the end of the clip. This is even more impressive when i looked and realised that Chris Martin had to lip sync the song backwards for it to be effective in the video.

The director has used shots such as panning close ups which lead into establishing shots which emphasise the use of having the action of the video in reverse. The first camera shot of the video is a reverse zoom from a horizontal angle on Chris as he is lying on a mattress in a public area. As the camera zooms out, it reveals the typical mise-en-scene that a director uses to highlight a run down area with the graffiti and boarded up doorways.

The focus of the video is on Chris Martin as he lip syncs whilst the narrative unfolds. Coldplay have chosen to include a band member in the video, however, to tie in with the soft pop-rock tone of the song, the costume department have opted to put Chris in basic clothes with a white long sleeves top and black trousers along with a black jacket when he puts it on later in the video.

Other effects have been used in the video to emphasise the reverse effect, for example, there is a medium shot of Chris standing in a forest with the fallen leaves rising back up to the trees they fell from. Also whilst in the forest there is a sudden change to the time of day as the video is in daylight at the beginning and then it is suddenly night time, this may show that he has spent a night in the wood.

The narrative of the video all ties together at the end as the camera pans past a woman lying on the floor just before Chris gets into a car and the footage rewinds faster as the woman flies back into the car through the windscreen and the audience realise the pair had a crash as the car rolls back up the hill and onto the road.


After watching this video numerous times, i have grown a huge amount of respect for the band and the producers as they have quite literally created a masterpiece. But in terms of our music video project, i feel as if we don't have the technology and time to produce such a video.