Midnight Music Video

Music Videos are perhaps the most experimental ways of testing a variety of filming techniques, from small short narratives to psychodelic patterns, allowing the maker to find new ways of portraying and relaying images to the audience.

This music video, by the popular band Coldplay, is from their most recent single called 'Midnight' - which is directed by Mary Wigman.

It is an unusual and unique piece of work, as well as interesting, both in the way the video is complitated but also in the approach. The music accompanying the video is truly haunting, but at the same time undoubtedly beautiful.

The lyrics are as follows:

In the darkness before the dawn
In the swirling of this storm
When I'm rolling with the punches
And hope is gone
Leave a light, a light on.

Millions of miles from home
In the swirling, swimming on,
When I'm rolling with the thunder
But bleed from thorns
Leave a light, a light on.

In the darkness before the dawn,
In the darkness before the dawn,
Leave a light, a light on.

The meaning of the lyrics is unclear, (or it simply hasn't been disclosed), but several individuals have interpreted the song as a message of hope. The tone of the music is generally positive, but the distorted vocals carry a darker shade of mentality - which is perhaps heavily portrayed in the accompanying video.

The video itself is clever, and contains many technical effects. What is most noticeable is the fact that it is filmed in what seems like night-vision or x-ray vision, which in turn allows the editor to experiment with a broader variety of effects such as ghosting.

Ghosting is an effect which means that the image is replicated several times, and then positioned slightly off the original and super-imposed over the top. You can see this in the above image as the man closest to the camera has several arms, but his body remains in the same position.

The colouration of the video is black and white, however, as it goes on, colour is slowly introduced. Another possibility of how the video was filmed, apart from night-vision and x-ray vision, is infra-red. This conclusion is apparent in one particular shot where the singer's hand is placed against a tree, and when it is removed the mark of the hand can be seen on the surface. This mark is undoubtedly a heat source, which reinforces the idea.

Other techniques include jump cutting - which is used particularly to make people reappear and disappear in a single shot- and video merging - which is when one shot is placed on top of another. The merging process is limitless, and several videos can be layered on top of each other.

You can watch the video here:

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