Payphone – Maroon 5

 

 Payphone – Maroon 5

 

The opening of the video shows a beaten man surrounded by fire so immediately we can see that something bad has happened. We don’t know whether he did something or someone did something to him. He walks over to a payphone (hence the name of the song) and he dials a number.  The camera then cuts to the same man sat at a desk looking through papers and he looks very bored but also very clean and smart because of his suit. From this we can see that the video has used a flashback to tell the story and this is before the bad thing has happened. From looking around with different shots we can see that he is in something like a bank and this gets us thinking about what is going to happen because the bad thing will probably happen here.

When the singing starts we see it is his future self singing and his younger self is looking at a woman. This means that it is probably her he is singing to on the phone and he is trying to say how he loves her. After this we see the bad thing unfold. The bank is getting robbed and they are all terrified. When they see a clearing they go for it. The man and the woman get away and they are then confronted by the police because they think they could be the robbers but we know they aren’t. When they say goodbye to each other they have the classic don’t go moment and then we see him steal the car to get away. It makes the audience see the moment through him because he realises he is wanted so he doesn’t care anymore. This is why he steals the car and gets away.

We see how he is slowly taking off his suit to match his future self and we can see his many tattoos. This is because the stereotypical criminal has tattoos but at first we don’t see his tattoos. This is because he is not the criminal and he is a regular person in the wrong place at the wrong time. He doesn’t try to tell the police that it wasn’t him. This is relating to how he looked so bored at work and now he wants some action in his life. The person rapping in the video is the person that the man stole the car from but this isn’t really explained. The rapper is standing next to a bin with fire in like he is homeless but he only had his car stolen and not his house. When he destroys the car we see the rapper in the background but he doesn’t do anything which is odd.

The good things in this video are the effects and the narrative even though parts don’t make sense to me. I like the way he has to get away for some adventure. Instead of having his boring life he tries to escape the police and risk being killed just for something to do which I think is clever. The narrative could give some good ideas to my music video especially the flashbacks used to show both parts of the story unfolding.