Coldplay The Scientist starts off with a close of Chris Martin lying on a mattress this could be due to the record label wanting lots of close as Andrew Goodwin said. The music video itself is a performance narrative with Chris martin singing and acting in the narrative its self. Interestingly only the lead singer from Coldplay is in the video and this stereotypical challenges Alternative rock music videos as often the band are playing in the performance. A reason Chris might be doing it on his own could be that the other members of the band don’t like the limelight and this is shown as Chris is the only one to ever talk in interviews.
The outfit of Chris Martin during the music video is very bland with some white top and black trousers. This could be to try and show that he is just like every other human even though he is a celebrity as it
may sell more songs if he seems relatable to.
The music video itself has a reverse narrative and this is different from the other music videos I have analysed. A reverse narrative means that we see the outcome before we see what happens and this means we have a lot of shots of Chris walking backwards and the basketball coming out of the hoop. Due to the clips being reversed Chris had to learn to sing the song backwards which shows Chris’s dedication to the video. This could appeal to a bigger audience due to it being played in reverse as it’s a unique type of video and it shows that the band and specifically Chris has talent
Even the shots Coldplay used showed it was a reversed narrative for example when Chris was lying on the mattress the shot moved out where as conventionally in music videos you start with an establishing shot and move into a close. Using a reversed narrative helped make the audience intrigued as its bizarre watching people waking backwards and someone cycling backwards The first scene location is a surprise when you’re watching the video for the first time as stereotypical it would be where teenagers hand out and gangs graffiti all over the walls but we don’t expect to see Chris there especially as at the time of shooting this shot he was already famous and about the age of 25. However, after watching the video for a second time you realise that he was hiding away from the fact he accidentally just killed/ injured his friend in a car crash. This music video is definitely challenging conventions for the genre as you don’t formerly see a band hanging out in a graffitied area.
While specifically watching the editing of the music video we can see that a lot of fade shots are used, and this is to discreetly keep the narrative of the video going. we also see a lot of fade shots in chasing cars by Snow Patrol video. There is a relationship between the visuals and the lyrics especially through the way that Chris sings “I’ll take you back to the start� Almost trying to tell the audience that he can explain what happened. This would make the audience who are watching the video for the first-time release that it is a reversed narrative but the audience would also decode the message that Chris has done something wrong.
During the music video, there are lots of leaves around which may be due to it being autumn and this could be to symbolise and foreshadow
that something massive has changed in Chris life due to the car accident and that he’s not sure how he can live with himself. Also, it could suggest life with the leaves falling of the trees there is chance for another tree to grow to life and this could suggest that Chris feels guilty for cutting someone’s life short. This could also be shown as leading up to the car a lot of the shots are at night which the dark often symbolising scared and danger and Chris may not be sure what to do next does he report the death and possibly get in trouble or does he choose to run away which is what he did although we saw this happen first due to the reversed narrative. It’s very interesting how there are little codes placed throughout the music video for the audience to detonate, Stuart hall encoding and Decoding theory, to give a