music video analysis 4

The music video that I'am analysing would be "the scientist" by coldplay. The song immediately begins with a close up shot more evidently showing only his facial features looking directly at the camera. This is so that the audience can familiarise themselves with the singer as being in the famous band cooldplay. As he starts singing the lyrics to the song we instantly realise its the concept of love and in actual fact its about the mans powerlessness in the face of love that nothing can fix it, not even maths or science also that love is a more comlicated matter then maths and science. As the camera pulls back we are revealed that he's lying on a matress placed outside and his body is disporpotionate as if his broken some body parts.
        At around 39 seconds the whole narrative plot is acknowledged to use reverse chronology from the boy in the bicycle riding it backwards and Chris rising from the mattress backwards aswell. At 57 seconds a low angle is shown on chris walking backwards in the streets of London. We know this is the streets of London majorly due to the angle the camera was positioned at, with Chris on one side of the frame and the scenary behind him clearly shown to the watcher of the video. What is unusual about this video is that whilst the footage is going backwards the lyrics coming out from his mouth seems to be shown singing it like any other normal person would. To achieve this effect Chris would have had to learn how to mouth the song in reverse which took him a month to do so. The reversed footage is also shown in slow motion to create more of a visual effect towards the audience. Throughout the video we follow Chris as to what he was exactly doing the moments before the beginning of him lying on the matress. It creates questions aswell as to what exactly was he doing and why would he be walking backwards in the woods picking up the clothes, a metaphor for the pieces of the story and putting them back on. The lighting at this point of the song is mostly natural lighting due to the scenary being shown to have the sky cloudy on the verge of pouring rain, usual for the British weather.
           At 2.54 two stories unfold due to a meduim wide shot of a woman presumably Chris's love interest, appearing to be lying dead on the grass. The sharpness of this woman contrasts with the background of Chris walking backwards not aware of this woman just carrying on with his story. The sharpness is used so that we can focus on the woman instead of the background and gives more detailed effects.At 3.05 the slow panning camera following Chris is then followed onwards with him getting inside a battered car with no front screens and parts of the car gone missing.The shattered glass that had been created by the car accident begins to come together with the woman moving in a reversed order into the car and the car rolling up the hill in a reversed order aswell. It is revealed that the car has skidded across the road at the top of the hill and there are shots of the drivers point of view so that the audience can experience the drive as if they were there themselves. Whilst the car is driving  backwards the woman on the passenger seat had taken of her seatbelt to put on her jacket the major reason as to why she had suffered tremendiously in the car accident. The song ends with a fading cut of the car driving continuesly backwards.
          In this video reverse chronology is very uniquely chosen as hardly any other videos contain this type of narrative telling. The main concept of using this reverse effect is for the first scene to be showing the conclusion to the plot in this case the car accident leading him to leave the place and wander of through the streets ending up lying on the mattress outside. The puposes of using reversing chronology would be leaving the audience and also the protagonist uninformed of the events that have unfolded beforehand.