Music Video Introduction Assignment

For this assignment, we were told to do an analysis on music videos in terms of its narrative structure, cinematography and editing. I worked on this in a pair with Harry.
Here is an analysis of Life In Technicolor II by Coldplay:


 


1. Narrative Structure
The music video opens with village fete in an English town and everyone is coming together to watch a puppet show. It opens with no music or direct relationship to coldplay or any music. As the puppet show opens, it is of two little men playing a xylophone type instrument and slowly it turns into a Coldplay concert where all of the singers are puppets. The build up is very effective, as slowly the lights dim, and as the audience is more captured and as the music builds up, slowly the stage extends out. Fireworks emerge and the faces of the audience change in astonishment too. It ends with a toy helicopter emerging into the room, and the puppets go onto the helicopter and fly out of a window, breaking it.
2. Cinematography
Rarely are long shots used in this video partially because of the small space of the room but is also not very appropriate for this content. The camera shots often do close ups on both the lead singer and a particular face of the audience, this nicely captures the relationship between the audience and players and how it evolves as the song progresses. The lighting also noticeably dims as the video progresses, as it becomes more of a concert and less of the puppet show. At the climax, there are fireworks with flashing lights and this really captivates the audience into awe. In terms of camera angles, it is mostly from the front on excluding towards the end where the atmosphere is at its height. This is when you become part of the audience and are looking up at the lead singer, making him look powerful, influential. When the lead singer does a crowd surf, the angle is from the birds eye view, but is still really front on since he is face up.
3. Editing
At the beginning of the video, the film barely focuses on any scene going on in the room. Always jumping from conversation to conversation, the children laughing, the current puppet show etc. This conveys the message of how nobody is focused on one thing in the room. Whereas by the end of the video, the shots barely ever leave the stage, but instead just jump fron angle to angle, frame to frame, conveying how everyone's eyes are entranced and focused on the concert. Despite this, there is still the general pattern of never remaining on one shot, as it tries to capture every aspect of the atmosphere and what is going on in the room. What is really effective in terms of the editing, is the sequence in which they have put the shots. The jumping from the stage to the different expressions of audience members and how they change is very interesting to watch.