Band: Thirty Seconds to MarsSong: Kings + QueensDirector: Bartholomew Cubbins

This music video foes against the normal conventions it starts and ends like a film, at the beginning their is a role of titles that seem to be film production companies. The last one says inspired by the song ‘Kings + Queens’.

Just like a film the music video opens with a shot that sets the scene, it show a city full of skyscrapers that are reflect-ing the orange sunset. As the shot is shown, a non-diegetic sound is played of an eagle, representing the location as America.

As the music starts to increase in noise a shot is shown of a road and some people dressed up in costumes riding bikes toward the camera. As the sound of a guitar is strummed their is a change of shot to a micro-phone and a person walking up to it in silhouette. With each strum of the guitar it changes scene to the band or the people biking up the road. It then goes to a shot where the drum-mer, vocals, and guitar player are in shot on the side. The drummer starts to hits the drums five times at that point it changes shot.

The shot shows people on bikes riding down a street singing the ‘Ooooooohhhhh’ part. With each time they restart singing ‘Ooooooohhhhh’ it changes shot to close ups of people on bikes.

When the main singer sings the first line ‘Into the night’ behind him you can see the sunsetting. As the play through the other

lines it changes shot to them on bike of on the top of a building playing their instruments. All these shot change to keep in time with the drums.

When he get to the second verse last line he sing ‘Heaven And Hell‘ as he sing this there is a pan down from the skyscrapers to a road that leads underground. This is them repre-sent heaven as being in the sky and as hell beneath us.

Later in the song as he sings ‘We were the Kings and Queens of promise’ it goes to show the people on the bikes dressed up in costumes biking through the underground roads. As he gets to the last part they all emerge out of a clear tunnel. When they are out of the tun-nel three bikers go off down a road, the main singer sings

‘Between Heaven and Hell’ ‘Heaven and Hell’

As he got to the last line one of the three bikers gets hit by a car, when the biker is lying on the road the music starts to fade away slowly. By the music fading away it cause a greater effect to be had on the person being hit. It then changes shot to a the singer having his arms, which people do when they are creating a dra-

matic pose in a church, it then changes to a shot of the building in the night with the lights on, on the left side you can see a cross made out of lights. This could be symbolising the person who was hit by the car going to heaven.

From the next verse my theory seems to be correct with the verse starting with the sentence ‘The age of man is over’, it then goes into the line ‘A darkness comes at dawn’ and in the video it shows a white horse running down the road in slow motion so that it fit in with the pace of music that has slowed down. The white horse could be a representation of God, as white is considered to be purity. The last line of the verse is ‘Have only just begun’ at this point the biker who has been on the floor opens his eyes and like nothing hap-pened gets on his bike and bikes away with the other two bikers flowing him.

As he goes through the last verses it show the bikers biking down the roads together. As he gets in to the last line of the last verse, ‘We are the Queens’ he elongates the word queens as he does it goes through

a flash of faces of the people on the bikes, which goes well with leading to the drumming. The song then ends with all the people sing ‘Ooooooohhhhh’ and finally stop-ping at a pier where there is an amusement park.