Opening shot: A wide, establishing shot of a sunrise over a desert, with the band's name silhouetted; contrasting and standing out on the orange background. Instantly branding the video as theirs.
Second shot: another wide shot of a sunrise, this time, with buffalo silhouettes on screen, underneath the song title and copyright details. Simple branding, but does the job efficiently, getting all relevant details across whilst only being on screen for 4 seconds.
Third shot: A mid shot of a person wearing an elephant costume stood behind bars, holding on and looking trapped, sad and lost. This shot looks less visually appealing than the other two, yet draws your attention in just as well due to the unusual nature of the signifiers on screen.
The video is obviously meant to be comical, not serious, yet still portray a emotional topic, especially for animal lovers. From here, the identity of the band is unclear and doesn't carry any of Coldplay's house style along with it.
The elephant is then followed across central London and subsequently across the globe, catching an aeroplane and then busking, to buy a bike, which he can't afford so settles for a unicycle.
Whilst in London, the British band used conventionally British iconography to convey the race through the capital, incorporating two British police officers, a 'Boris Bike', a telephone box, a London Underground sign, The Tube itself and a sign for Heathrow Airport. This enables a British audience to be able to identify that the elephant is in London, and maybe be able to see this as a metaphor of London being a zoo, especially during the commute.
Chris Martin requested that the elephant costume was the least serious one they could find, in order to keep the vision of paradise separate to the meaning of the song - a girl realising her life isn't what she expected and wishing for a perfect life, metaphorically represented through the elephants conquest of 'paradise'.
Chris Martin's first (and only) appearance in the video comes at 2:23, and he is only visible for 3 seconds.
The elephant then finds the rest of the band in the plains and performs with them. They are dressed up to hint at a resemblance with the members of the band, with one of them wearing converse trainers.
The band have used British signifiers to portray their nationality, with the abroad shots being very vague as to where in the world they are, yet the London part was obviously in the capital and they weren't low key about it. Other than this, the band do not really show their identity, hiding behind elephant costumes for all but 3 seconds during the video. This is unusual for bands to do as they normally would prefer to shout about a successful song, not hide behind some cartoon costumes.
In my video, I would prefer to show the band members, to promote their music by having a successful video to accompany the song, which also exposes them to the limelight instead of just their voices.
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