How are narrative techniques employed in Coldplay The Scientist

Coldplay's The Scientist is the second single from the bands second album, "A rush of blood to the head" which was released on the 4th of November 2002. The lyrics to the song tell a tale of a mans apology and his desire to love. The track was released as the second single from the album and peaked at number 10 in the UK charts. The song was later release in the United States as the third single from the album and climbed to 18th on the US Billboard modern rock tracks chart and number 34 on the Top 40 chart respectively. The song received critical acclaim with NME placing it at 37 on its list of "150 best tracks of the past 15 years" in October of 2011. Rolling Stone magazine also provided an accolade in the form of being placed at 54th in its list of "100 best songs of the decade".

The album itself did tremendously well with its sales figures, claiming the number 1 spot on the UK albums chart on its debut week moving 273,924 copies. The album has since been certified platinum 8 times in the UK for accumulating sales of over 2.8 million copies as of 2014 in the UK. It is Coldplay's best ever selling album, but the albums best accolade has to be the fact that as of March 2015 it ranks at the tenth best selling album of the 21st century. The album also did extremely well in the states with selling 144,000 copies in its first week. After being certified platinum 4 times in America the album has sold over 4,925,000 copies as of July 2014. The successes of the album doesnt stop in America however, along with being certified seven times platinum in Australia for sales of over 490,000 copies it has also gone platinum 4 times in Canada with over 400,000 sales. 

The first narrative technique we see in the video is one of Roland Barthes narrative codes, "The enigma or hermeneutic code". This is used to set up major puzzles in pieces of media and is important as it used to hook the audience to want to continue watching so that they can not only enjoy predicting or trying to work out the answer to the puzzle but so that they can also have their assumptions disrupted by twists in the narrative creating a more complex story and enjoyable viewing experience. This narrative code is present in the first two shots of the video where Chris Martin is first pictured laying on his back on a mattress which is followed by Chris getting back to feet and gripping his arm to indicate that he is hurt.

The enigma is present here with the viewer trying to gather why Chris is in this position and what has happened to him to cause damage to his arm. A second enigma is also established by the way of the video being shot in reverse, this allows the viewer to know that Chris is at the end of his journey but leaves them wondering on how he got there and what the turn of events were that got him there. These two shots also establish that the video has a linear narrative, but that the order of events has been reversed.

As the video progresses to shot of Chris walking backwards in the opposite direction to the other people on screen at the time, a binary opposition is created. The binary opposition could connote that Chris actually died in the car crash at the start of story. This can be argued as earlier on in the video when he is on the mattress, the bmx rider bikes past him without paying him any attention, the pedestrians seem oblivious to his existence and the basketball players seem to have no quarrel with him walking across the court as they are playing. The binary opposition is then established as life and death leads onto the idea of the events following the car crash all being a part of a dream sequence.

The idea that Chris died and the video is a dream sequence would make sense of the fact that the video is shot in reverse, as it isn't typical of music videos to be shot this way. It also disconnects Chris from all the bystanders that are present throughout and alienates him. This is most obvious in the shot of the men playing basketball, and shows Christ to be alone whilst they are in a group, just as he walks in the opposite direction to the pedestrians.

A second narrative code is present in the video, the symbolic code, where feature of a story are used to represent wider ideas. In the video this is done through the use of Chris walking on the railway tracks.

Trains and their lines are used to connote moving from place to place, or in the case of this video, state to state. The inclusions of the junctions in the shot connote the change from life to death. This is further supported by the following shot, which would come first if not reversed, being Chris coming out from a forest. Trees are used to connote life as that is what they provide through producing oxygen, and the train lines show that Chris has changed from life to death.


The two shots also show how Chris is now alone in the world.








The third narrative code that is present is "The action of proairectic code" which makes complex actions readable through tiny details. The tiny detail which led to me believing that Chris died in the crash is the shot of him picking up his jacket and putting it back on as he leaves the woods and goes back towards the car, which in normal order would be him taking off his jacket.

 Him taking off his black jacket symbolizes his death in the crash as it is the exact same thing his girlfriend does in the car which leads to her being without her seat belt on when the car crashes, which in turn leads to her being projected out of the car and dying. This is a tiny detail as the shot of the girl actually taking the jacket of goes so quick and I didn't notice this correlation the first few times of viewing. There is also colour symbolism present here with black representing death, both
jackets are black, and the car is black.

Just before the shots of Chris gaining his jacket back, we are faced with a disruption in the chronology of the video. Throughout the entire video the time is during the day but at one point in the woods Chris is surrounding by darkness as if it were night time.

In this shot Chris is jumping into a pile of Autumn leaves and seems to be rather happy, not what you would expect from someone who has just been in a car crash.  This is symbolic of Chris accepting what has happened and coming to peace with the events, which eventually leads to him falling onto a discarded mattress which we see at the beginning of the video. Following on from the idea of colour symbolism, the blackness of the woods symbolizes death where as Chris's white shirt symbolizes life, or it could be argued that the white shirt connotes heaven/ 

The video comes to an end with shots of Chris girlfriend dead on the floor going back into the car, with the glass forming back into the windscreen and the car ascending the hill before driving in reverse to a happy ending.