User:Tomica/Sandbox/Sugar (music video)

The music video for pop rock band Maroon 5's 2015 single "Sugar" was directed by filmmaker David Dobkin. It was filmed in December 2014 at several locations around the city of Los Angeles, California, including the ballroom of Park Plaza Hotel. Inspired by the 2005 romantic comedy film Wedding Crashers, starring American actors Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, the video features the band crashing several weddings, during which they surprise the newlyweds and their guests. The concept was conceived a month before filming by the director who, for the needs of the video, had a special tent built that hid the band from the newlyweds and their guests. Although initially he wanted to surprise both spouses, the director decided to tell the grooms about the surprise; the secret remained hidden, however, from the brides and guests until the moment of revelation.

The video starts with the members of the band leaving a location and getting into a car. Subsequently, a van parks near the Park Plaza Hotel, where a wedding is happening. A group of people get out of the car, enter the building and begin constructing a hidden stage, as the guests wonder what is happening. Shortly afterwards, the band sneaks into the building and secretly walks into the tent where white sheets cover their instruments. As they ready themselves to play, the bride and the groom are called to stand in front of curtained area. When the curtain drops and the band is revealed, the bride screams happily, while the groom becomes confused. The guests soon begin dancing to the song. Scenes of the band driving and singing are inter-cut with some of the band arriving at another wedding, where a similar situation occurs. During the last portion of the video, the band crashes five additional weddings, leaving everyone surprised.

Worried that the filming of the stunt would ruin the wedding for the couples, after the shooting of "Sugar", Maroon 5 played an acoustic version of their 2004 single, "She Will Be Loved", which served as the "first dance" for the couple. The video premiered on January 14, 2015 via Maroon 5's Vevo channel on YouTube. It was available the same day for digital download via the iTunes Store in Canada and the United States. It received its television premiere on January 17 at 9 a.m. EST on VH1 Top 20 Video Countdown. Critics responded favorably to the video, with several calling it fun and finding it very close to the nature of the song. They also discussed the similarities between Wedding Crashers and the video. Several online magazines reported that the weddings in the video were staged while the newlyweds were actors.

In 2014, American film director David Dobkin was in Rome, Italy, for the premiere of his new film, the 2014 drama, The Judge. During his stay there, he received an e-mail from Maroon 5's frontman Adam Levine with the text, "Hey man are you available in November to do a video?" Dobkin eagerly accepted the offer to shoot their new video. "I’ve known Adam for over a decade. I met him before the first Maroon 5 album came out. My wife’s parents are best friends with his grandparents and I spend Christmas with him every year. So we’ve known each other for a long time and always talked about doing something together but were never able to get our schedules lined up."^[1] After he agreed to film the video for "Sugar", they started bouncing around ideas for its concept. Dobkin wanted the video to be about the band's connection with their audience and wanted elements of real people and Los Angeles, Levine's hometown.^[1] In an interview with VH1, the director revealed, "Then the idea came up of, what if they went to real weddings and showed up as the surprise wedding band?". When Levine heard the idea, he loved it.^[1]

In 2005, Dobkin directed the film Wedding Crashers in which American actors Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn played the characters of John Beckwith and Jeremy Grey, respectively.^[2] They star as "two dashing rogues who sneak into nuptials in search of lovelorn bridesmaids."^[1] The film received positive reviews from movie critics^[3] and was a box office success earning over $285 million dollars worldwide.^[4] Dobkin revealed, "For 10 years everyone asks me to do something related to that movie. I’ve never wanted to go back there, just because it’s something that worked so well. But we locked in on this idea and thought it would be great. And then it was like, holy shit, how do we pull this off?" After the concept was decided on, they started preparing the wedding crashes. At the beginning, the director thought that no one should know about the crash and filming. After some rethinking, however, he decided that at least one person should know about it. So they informed only the grooms and decided to keep the secret from the brides. The grooms were not, however, told the name of the band; they were only told that they are very popular and had won several Grammy Awards. The next step was deciding how, at the beginning of each performance, the band would hide. Dobkin designed and had built a drop-down tent, where a button was pressed, causing the curtains drop to the floor. After that, Dobkin visited many wedding planners in Los Angeles and visited a number of the locations where weddings would be happening, in order to decide which location at the site would be the best for setting up the tent.^[1]

The music video was filmed in December 2014 in Los Angeles.^[5] It was shot at several ballrooms, located at various locations around the city, where weddings were happening. One of the ballrooms was at the Park Plaza Hotel, a very popular location for celebrations and parties.^[6] A week before filming the video commenced, Dobkin went to see the band, who were rehearsing for the visual.^[7] During the meeting, Levine questioned the concept, "What if people don’t like us? What happens if we ruin the bride's moment?". That was the first time they started wondering "What if we're ruining someone’s most special day?"^[7] In order to prevent that from hapenning, Levine got an idea: after performing "Sugar", he and the band's guitarist, James Valentine would perform an acoustic version of their 2004 single "She Will Be Loved" just for the bride and the groom. The dance floor would be cleared of everyone except for the newlyweds and the song would be another traditional "First Dance" for the newlyweds. According to Dobkin, that was a very good idea. "That’s awesome. It’s just sick romantic."^[7]

A few days before shooting began, most of the grooms started getting nervous and wanted to cancel the wedding crash. Dobkin met with each of them and talked them out of canceling. At one point, he told them that the mysterious band is in fact Maroon 5. Eventually, it turned out that most of them were fans of Maroon 5 and "Adam from The Voice" and had positive responses for performing "She Will Be Loved" after shooting "Sugar". "There’s no way she could be mad at me after that".^[7] Before filming the video, the band invited, via Twitter, their fans to take part in the shoots.^[8] Prior to the filming of each sequence, the production team had approximately 20 minutes to enter the location and begin building the tent, while the band tried to get in unnoticed.^[1] During the first wedding, which was a Jewish wedding, the bride and the groom were sitting in their chairs and while the tent was being constructed, Dobkin received a call on his radio saying that the band was stuck in the elevator. Eventually, they got out of the elevator and had to run nine floors in order to get to the ballroom in time for filming. Dobkin recalled that when the performance of "Sugar" finished, the members of the band looked at him like they wanted to say, "Oh my God. That was awesome! Where’s the next one?"^[7]

In a press release for the video, Levine stated, "It was an out of body experience. I had no idea I would be affected by the overwhelming reactions we received from the couples and guests. Being able to create an unforgettable experience for several people was the highlight of it all."^[9] He also spoke with Kevin Frazier of Entertainment Tonight and told him how it was stressful to arrange the whole video. however, the brides and grooms were shocked that the band crashed their wedding. He added, "It was a lot of fun. It felt good to kind of surprise these people and make them happy. Happy that they liked our band too. It would have been a total disaster [if not]."^[10] A representative for Duke Photography, who photographed the weddings, has said, "It was an incredible surprise and everyone at the wedding is going to cherish those memories."^[8] The video for "Sugar" premiered on January 14, 2015 via the band's Vevo channel on YouTube.^[11] It was available for digital download the same day, via the iTunes Store in Canada^[12] and the United States.^[13] It received its television premiere on January 17 at 9 a.m. EST on VH1 Top 20 Video Countdown.^[9]

The video starts with the members of the band getting out of a location, with Levine saying, "It's December 6, 2014. We're going to drive across L.A. and hit every wedding we possibly can."^[9] After the speech he gets into the car and starts driving. Subsequently, a van parks near the Park Plaza Hotel where a wedding is happening in its ballroom.^[6] A group of people get out of it, enter the building and start constructing a secret scene while the guests are surprised and start wondering what's happening. One guest stands up and starts arguing with the builders, while scenes are intercut with Maroon 5 driving around the city and Levine singing the lyrics of the song. The band gets in front of the hotel and sneaks into the building while the whole situation is happening; they are getting into the white sheets where the instruments are set in. As they are set they call the bride and the groom to stand in front of them and get the curtains down; when they see them the bride starts to scream happily, while the groom gets confused. After that they start smiling and all the guests get up and start dancing to the song.

Scenes are intercut with the band driving again, getting to another wedding and are sneaking inside the building where its happening. Similar situation happens there when they show to the guests which are both surprised and happy. While driving around Los Angeles, some girls recognize the band and take picture with Valentine. During the last of the video, the band crashes in five more weddings leaving the people surprised. The video concludes with the guests of the weddings giving applause to the band, while Maroon 5's members cheer with the newlyweds. At the very ending of the visual, Levine says to the guests "Thank you guys, this was the coolest thing we did ever, ever, ever, ever...^[5]

According to Ryan Reed of Rolling Stone, in the video the band channels the roles of actors Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers while surprising the audience with their performance of "Sugar".^[9] The Daily Telegraph's Catherine Gee thought that the video proves that, "seems to not a soul in Los Angeles would mind if the rock band arrived at their reception unannounced and performed their new single."^[14] Elias Leight of Billboard noted that the reaction of the people in the crash ranged from screaming, pointing, then shouting, while in the end they were finally dancing. He also noted that the girls were quicker to recognize Levine than the boys.^[15] Melodi Smith of CNN wrote that the looks of faces in the rooms are "priceless: delight, tears, confusion".^[2] Jennifer Maas of Entertainment Weekly noted how every groom should be embarrassed of Levine hugging his bride after the end of performance and wrote, "All in all, if this is somehow an authentic stunt, the music video director totally stole the thunder of those couples' wedding videographers."^[16]

Steven Gottlieb of Video Static called the video "fun" and "gambit" with a goal just to surprise the wedding and not to pick up drunk bridesmaids, a reference to Wedding Crashers.^[17] Elizabeth Vanmetre of Daily News wrote that, "Having Adam Levine crash your wedding would be the icing on any wedding cake."^[18] Time's Laura Stampler reviewed the video and wrote that although the video will not make you mad like Maroon 5's previous visual for "Animals" in which Levine stalks a woman who is played by his real-wife, model Behati Prinsloo while covered in blood, "but you’ll probably still be annoyed".^[19] She further stated that "I do" is the happiest moment in your life, but seeing Levine singing the lyrics "hotter than southern California Bay" to the new wife "is the happiest moment in your life".^[19] According to Leigh Weingus of The Huffington Post in the video, Levine made the wedding crashing a lot more "awesome" than Wilson and Vaughn.^[20] Paul Grein of Yahoo! Music's Chart Watch labeled the video as a little bit "corny", however according to him it's also "cute" and "fun".^[21]

Several online magazines including Life & Style,^[22] Rolling Stone^[23] and Cosmopolitan^[24] reported that the video was allegedly staged and filmed over a course of three days on the same location. According to them, the first groom was played by New Zealand actor Nico Evers-Swindell, while actor, Eric Satterberg and a former 'America's Next Top Model' contestant, Raina Hein also played the role of a guest and bride respectively. Additionally, two of the actors who played the role of parents said "The Buzz on the internet is whether the Maroon 5 'Sugar' music video is real or staged. We played the parents of the Asian bride and yes, everything was staged".^[22] Carly Mallenbaum of USA Today also analyzed the situation and wrote that although its possible some of the weddings were staged, at least two of them were real. She spoke to wedding photographer, Eric Parsons who told her that he was shooting one of the weddings when Maroon 5 made the guest surprise, "Sharon [the bride] knew nothing about it. She's the one who mouths 'WTF' in the video.".^[25] Another photographer, Duke Khodaverdian was shooting other wedding, "Around 10:30, some producer came up and said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, we have a great surprise for you' Everyone went berzerk. The room was electric."^[25] The scenes where the band is taking shots of a cognac are part of a wedding Khodaverdian shot.^[25]

Two days after its release, the video accumulated over 16 million views on YouTube. With the feat, it was set to help the song to debut at a high peak on the US Billboard Streaming Songs chart, which measure the United States clicks of the video. Additionally, the visual helped the song to soar at number one on the real-time Billboard + Twitter Trending 140 for the week ending January 16. Finally, it helped the digital sales of the song, with Billboard predicting over 150,000 digital downloads sold in the first week of the single release.^[26] For the week ending January 31, 2015, the song debuted at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and number seven on the Streaming Songs chart.^[27]

• "Sugar" music video on YouTube