~Music Video Evaluation~ [Life in Technicolour II]

Continuing with my surreal theme, Life in Technicolour II by Coldplay is an interesting little music video. The band-members don't make an appearance within the track, and are instead represented as figurines of themselves on a fate stage, mirroring Punch and Judy. We see humans in the audience opposite the figurines, who are playing their intstruments and singing, to create a rather intricate parallel between the two.

The video begins with a long shot of a tavern, which cuts to a close-up shot of people walking into the building. Overlapping these scene is diagetic sound, as the song does not yet begin. Instead, we hear voices of people talking incoherently, as if waiting for something to happen. Inside the room we see elderly people talking, and there is some sort of bake sale occuring. As the shot shows the puppets in medium shot, we see a reaction shot from the children laughing as the puppets attack one another. We then see an establishing shot of the stage as the camera zooms out, giving us a good scope of events which will occur next. We see close-up shots quickly edited together of the members of the band playing instruments, and a high-angle shot of a girl reaching for a Coldplay book. An over the shoulder shot shows her point of view looking at the book, and she looks back up from a low angle to see the figurines playing their instruments, and the Chris Martin puppet singing when the music begins.

The lighting in this scene is rather high-key, and the children are all dressed in typical young clothing to show their innocence and surprise when the puppets and figurines on stage begin singing. A panning shot is seen circling the stage to capture the singer. The stage then becomes more of a realistic one, with speakers and amps placed around, and the lighting becomes low-key, with the regimented band members playing their song, the light from above centering on the singer. As Chris Martin walks out nearer the audience, we see a shallow depth of field with him in complete focus and the background blurred to show his importance as the main focus of attention. There are frequent medium reaction shots of the confused audience as they watch the show before them. At the end of the video the band take off in a helicoptor and leave the surprised audience behind, their shocked reactions making us wonder what has exactly happened within this video. Their shocked responses can be expected, especially when these little puppets begin smashing their equipment and bursting into flame at the end of the video.