Favourite music video analysis: Maroon 5 - Payphone ft. Wiz Khalifa

Genre

The genre of music video is a narrative used in an intertextual way to create a action film style video, with the events and visual codes throughout put together to create a short narrative of your typical action film, with scenes of gunfire, car chases explosions and romance for the hero.

The video narrative is of the protagonist that works in a bank at a payphone trying contact his love interest surrounded by fire. this then takes us to a flashback where the bank that he works at is robbed and in the process of getting a women out who appears to be a love interest to him, gets mistaking by the police as a criminal and ends up being pursued himself.
There are intertextual  references to action films throughout the film giving the music video a clear theme of narrative with only a few scenes that are performance based, allowing the action theme of the video to be set.



Narrative
The music video Shows Todorov's theory but not all the way through with the video starting at equilibrium, there being a distribution followed by recognition and ending halfway through resolution not getting all the way back to equilibrium again.

The lyrics reflect the song to some extent with Maroon 5 singing all the lyrics into a payphone as the chorus sings and the flashback creating a action themed story about the protagonist and his love interest being separated by a string of events and now his just trying to call her to get home to her where he believes he belongs even though it no longer is possible.

Representation
Representation is used in this video stereotypically showing gender putting a women as the damsel in distress and maroon 5 - the male a hero who she needs to save the woman from the criminals who are robing the bank. He then however in a twist in the music video becomes a anti-hero as the police mistake him for one of the robbers in the heist and he goes on the run. when he gets into the car lots of low angles are then used to show he has power and control as he is being chased and through out while he is in the payphone again to conetate the same thing.

The music video has a few locations the main one in the payphone where maroon 5 does the performance part of the video (all the lip syncing). The other locations consist of the bank where the heist takes part break up the equilibrium then on the streets, then the highway for the chase.
The majority of the video that is a flash back of his day is in very low-key lighting even when outside with high-key used when in normal time with maroon-5 in the payphone. this is to cause juxtaposition between the flashbacks and normal time.


Camera 
Lots of low angles and close ups are used on maroon 5 to give him power and represent him as the hero throughout as well as low angles shots on the girl to make her seem helpless giving her a damsel in distress role.
The editing begins at a slow pace however speeds up as the heist happens with lots of cuts however the camera also moves around to follow the protagonist and we are even giving a shot during the chase from his point of view.


Audience The audience for this video based on the context of the video is mainly males due to the actions however certain element like the love story with the damsel in distress and the way maroon 5 is represented to look like an action hero and look manly and charming combined with the type of song his audience is main teenage female.

From analysing this video it has helped me when coming to my own by giving me a clear idea of how to use representation to show off propp's theory of characters within media, with a strong hero, damsel and villains shown throughout the music video. I now believe that I could bring these characters into my own video to support the narrative.