5 reasons why Adele's "Hello" Music video is overrated.

Xavier Dolan is an amazing artist, his acting and directing skills are to be recognized. His film "Mommy" was able to fetch him a Palme d'or nomination and a "Prix de Jury" at Cannes international festival. At the age of 26, with the dedication he have, he is destined to have a great future ahead of him.
Adele herself does not need any introduction. A powerful voice, and an artist who knows who to chose to collaborate with, Any song with her voice is always a candidate to be on top of the charts.

The Collaboration between Dolan and Adele is something with great potentials close to infinite ones. Unfortunately, the enemy they faced when producing the music video of "Hello" increased the gap between what the music video could have been and what it ended up being.

Being short on time, and working with a tight deadline brought this music video from "wow" to "merely mediocre". Here are the 5 reasons why:

1. Color grading
This video was shot in Quebec. During Autumn. Anyone who lives in Quebec knows how breathtaking the scenery is in this season, the colors, the contrasts. I understand Dolan was probably opting to a monotone look, going with sepia is just an amateur's way to get things done. Monotone with colors is achievable, no need to de-saturate and tint. It looked like an outdated Instagram effect.

2. Variety of focal length
Yes, the combination of detail shots at the beginning brings you in and makes it enjoyable, but you cannot rely on close ups and mediums throughout the entire video, there was very minimum wide shots there. Adele can be very nit picking on the wide shots, maybe because she is not very comfortable with her looks on those shots. But she is a great artist and we love her no matter what! No need to make us claustrophobic.

3. Use of sound bites
It is nice to have to background sound effects, but at least it should be justified, with a purpose and understandable. The only purpose I found is to make it harder for people who usually download songs from YouTube.

4. Poor ending
In my opinion, every work that classifies under visual art should have a message and a powerful impact at the end, unless it's something experimental. And I think both Adele and Dolan should be way past the experimental phase. This video, coming from artists from such magnitude should have had an impact.

5. Story line
The first day the song and the video were released, My boss walked into the office and told me about the song and that he was listening to an interview with Dolan on the Radio, and that everyone was praising the video saying how amazing it is. My boss wanted to do a small experiment, he wanted for me and him to listen to the song, come out with a scenario and then look at the actual video and compare. So we did, and within 15 minutes we were able to sketch some nice concepts to the song (3 different ones to be exact) and needless to say, the actual music video was a disappointment due to the clichet story line it had. 

All in all the music video is a success, but unfortunately, number of views does not determine the artistic magnitude of a production, let's not forget how many views "Gangnam style" has. It is a success but not a breakthrough, there is a lot of wasted potential in it that puts it under the "Disappointing" category for me. If more time investment was put into it, it could have been a true masterpiece.