Mat Whitecross – A Music Director I Am Passionate About

Mat Whitecross has worked with Take That directing their music video for The Flood, however Whitecross has mostly directed music videos for Coldplay. These include music videos for Paradise, Every Teardrop is a Waterfall and Charlie Brown.

Mat Whitecross very often uses a long establishing shot of a very aesthetically pleasing land or cityscape such as the beautiful silhouetted tree shot with the burning sun and some cloud in the background.

Throughout his music videos he seems to use a technique where there are sections of slow-motion blended with normal speed to emphasize certain parts of his music videos. Additionally his music videos are very narrative based presenting a story either directly to the audience or subtly aside the band playing in some way such as within Charlie Brown, for example whilst the band plays, parallel editing shows a guy front flipping over a building and half way through the flip slow-motion is applied which then returns back to normal speed.

I really love the vivid bright colouring used within all the music videos that Mat Whitecross directed for Coldplay. Even though there are not many bright colours within Paradise, at the end of the video it shows the band live on stage with multiple colours, enforcing this style of bright colours that Whitecross uses.

Since Mat Whitecross has directed a music video for Take That and multiple others for Coldplay he mostly sticks with pop or alternative genre music. Even though Whitecross does mostly direct mainstream music videos he manages to have his own unique abstract feel to his videos.

Whitecross has worked alongside Michael Winterbottom who is a professional film maker which has noticeably and subtly influenced his work. I think this because of the types of establishing shots he uses sets the scene like within films which is not usually as conventional for music videos as well as the way he sets up narratives in his music videos.

Live performance is used a lot in Whitecross’ music videos, he uses it within the end of his story in Paradise after the elephant finally escapes, mainly within the end half of Every Teardrop is a Waterfall and throughout Charlie Brown.

Whitecross frequently uses narratives, which additionally really grip the audiences. For example in paradise we follow an escaped elephant (which is Chris Martin in an elephant costume) which the audience sympathise with due to the elephants innocence and need to be free and get to his home. In Charlie Brown the audience are, I think, intrigued to follow a female character and a quite controversial male who meet up and show they are clearly in a relationship where they go to where Coldplay are playing their music.

Charlie Brown has a very fast editing pace which slowly builds up speed towards the end creating a very energetic feel to fit with the club atmosphere. Every Teardrop’s editing is slightly slowly in comparison however it still keeps up energy in relation to the very vivid colours.Paradise on the other hand has a much slower editing pace which was probably to allow for a calmer and innocent narrative to be told to the audience.

I like even though Mat Whitecross has a certain filmic style (establishing shots, slow-motion and overall film look) with very good use of colours and intriguing narrative, I really like how he manages to create a different twist on the separate music videos he has done such as the Every Teardrop is a Waterfall video.