Goodwins homework

The video i analyzed is 'The Scientist by Coldplay' it is directed by Jamie Thraves, It is a very serial and abstract music video the way the video is done all backwards. The lead singer Christopher Martin had to learn the whole song lyrics backwards to get the effect that the film had to show, I will be analyzing the video through Goodwin's points.

There is a lot of genre characteristics, with this music video being an indie band, it shows off the indie conventions of showing what the artist can do, this is what a lot of indie bands do, the way the band shows off what the main artist can do, it is similar to any typical rock/metal band where they like to show the audience in a lot of there music videos because the audience really get in to the music. The indie band genre characteristics in coldplay are shown a lot through the artist and lead singer. The stage performance is brilliant, the story is all backwards and the artist had to learn all the words backwards to get the backward effect to work. Actors are playing basketball in the set and this shows the ball moving backward and it makes it clear that story is being done backwards.
The relationship is very significant between the lyrics and the video, lyrics reflect on the end of the story where it shows an accident happen. It is a narrative story being shown through the whole video. It is very illustrative, how the story behind the lyrics works with the video, there is no contradicting through the whole story. The lyrics it says "no body said it was easy, no one ever said it would be so hard, I'm going back to the start" these lyrics work very well with the backward effect, because he wants the car accident not to happen. The visuals shown work very well with the lyrics because he is describing his emotions that the through this car accident he'll never be able to recover.
Looking at the video it consists of a lot of work on the background, the background creates a lot of meaning through mood. However the mood contradicts the background because the background seems happy however the lyrics seem to be sad, this effect works though because it could be argued to different people that the background is sad. However, there are several close ups and different camera styles, through the production. Even in Coldplays other videos like 'Viva la Vida' he is shown a lot, the artist has developed motifs which re-occur across there work. Especially the camera work a lot of similar camera shots occur.
Not all of Goodwins points can be established in this video. However the ones that do are very productive and work with the music video. It works very well with the video, the video is full of suspense with a neat story twist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmjPrdTNxQ0



The video couldn't be embeded so i had to get screen grabs and the URL.