Why Adele Used A Flip Phone In Her New Music Video ‘Hello’

Not every urban song has to be ratchet or weird. Art takes different forms to bring out character and story. Graphic designers and artists always embrace simplicity so that the intended message comes out clearly. Nowadays, for a music video to hit the charts must have explicit pictures and dirty language included in the lines. However, Adele doesn’t need all that to make a hit.

Adele’s new music video has reached about 69 million views on YouTube and it’s being watched over 20 million times per day. The song makes you miss that special person you met five years ago along Moi Avenue. The literature in the song is amazing and Adele holds the crown in words and creativity. The video is simple and makes you understand the plot.

Adele’s fans questioned the relevance of the flip phone in the music video. The questions revolved around the outdated piece of technology and the visuals. Some people on Twitter used jokes like — “It’s not just Adele’s comeback. It’s the flip phone’s comeback too.”

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Director Xavier Dolan explained his reasons why he used a flip phone in the visual treatment for the song. The song is the first single from Adele’s upcoming album 25.

“I could see the GIFs on Twitter,” the director said. “I’m like, ‘Guys, get over it. It doesn’t matter.’ But the real explanation is that I never like filming modern phones or cars. They’re so implanted in our lives that when you see them in movies you’re reminded you’re in reality.”

“If you see an iPhone or a Toyota in a movie, they’re anti-narrative, they take you out of the story,” Dolan continues. “If I put an iPhone or a modern car in a movie it feels like I’m making a commercial.”

Ideally, any equipment used in a clip must have a meaning and help carry the story. The flip phone in the song “says she is stranded in nature, which has regained its rights,” the director said. “It’s an element of the past. It’s much more important than the flip phone and trying to identify whether it’s Samsung or an AE9 or whatever.”

The music video is shot in a windswept forest, a nostalgic palette and an expression of extreme loneliness covered by soft voice that pierce through your emotions to tear your heart into pieces. Well, that’s what I saw.

Dolan said. “It’s the connect with memory, the ‘walk down memory lane. We would cut from Adele in the present to this guy looking at her and not have a younger version of Adele so that watching it, you would feel like her looking back.”

 

Erick Vateta564 Posts

--- Erick Vateta is a lawyer by training, poet, script and creative writer by talent, a model, and tech enthusiast. He covers International tech trends, data security and cyber attacks.

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