Love is a strange thing it can make people act in ways that place themselves in danger for another. It alters the mind in a way where you can experience withdrawals if you do not see that person. Love is a blessing and a curse as it can make a person happy beyond their wildest dreams or crush their spirits in an instant. Love is complicated but a simple thing that spawns from an emotional and physical connection with someone. The idea of love has been portrayed by the media for decades often using different ideas and morals on what a band thinks their ideal of love is. In the music video Kids, by One Republic, two kids meet in Spain and fall in love. The music video is stunning filled with beautiful shots of Spain, amazing camera work, and a very good song that keeps the story progressing. The music video is also filled to the brim with visual motifs. The visual motifs used in this music video revolved around the use of color, specifically the color red. The color red illustrates the theme of love in the music video.

Visual motifs are used as a way to convey feelings without the use of text. For example when a color is used extensively in a video it can be associated with a certain emotion. This is called the color theory. Color theory suggests that different colors convey different meanings subtlety in the background of the piece. For example blue represents sadness, calmness and the ocean. The color therory in music videos often have different themes and have different ways that the directors use the color. The lyrics can help determine what the theme is.  When looking at "Kids" one thing is clear the use of color theory is prominent in the piece. 

The video’s use of color is used extensively throughout the video. Mostly the color red, red in music video’s is used to convey romance and passion. This music video is filled with the color red, from the first scene where the girl gets out of bed and puts on her red dress. To her love interest’s shirt which happens to be red. Even the brick city in Spain that they run through in the background is all red. To convey that the two kids are in love. The color red is extremely precedent throughout the video making sure it conveys the idea of love and passion. The color red has always been a symbol to convey love whether it is associated with love. We have red roses that you give to your partner, the color of hearts and has been associated with passion. This motif is constantly portrayed throughout the music video as the two kids fall in love red is present throughout the video.

Red has been associated with love and passion for a very long time. The media has used the color red in adds for a long time. They use it on valentine’s day even using a different hue of red to convey love. This now has become a motif for the media to exploit often using roses and other things as hearts to convey the use of passion. As seen in "Kids" red is used extensively and subtlety throughout the piece. It is in the background as bricks, the color of the protagonists dress, flowers in the background and even the guitar that One Republic uses is red. These motifs help convey and illustrate the idea of passion and love in the piece creating a very convincing music video.

            The lyrics also helps complement the visual motif and aids it in illustrating the theme. The lyrics in the music video talk about endless youth and can also be interpreted as love. The lyrics imply that there are two people involved in the activists he is listing off. “Nights when we kept dancing” this suggests that two people are together and by the lyrics it suggests it was a date.  This is one of many instances in which the lyrics suggests that two people presumably a boy and girl are running around having fun on a date. The music video also supports the lyrics,  in the video a boy and a girl are running around Spain having fun on a date. This is also where the motifs come into play, the use of red in the music video illustrates passion and love. The color red is prominent in the video in both the background taking form in brick walls, flowers, and the guitarists guitar as well as lot of the clothing in the video. In both the lyrics and the video it suggests that two people are falling in love. This is all brought together in order to illustrate the music videos theme of love and passion.

In conclusion the visual motifs help bring the music videos story together. The story focuses around two young kids falling in love in Spain. The city is covered in the color red and the two main protagonists in the story are both wearing red clothes. The visual motif that is portrayed is color to express an emotion in this case the emotion is love. As the video starts you open up with Spain and focuses in on a boy and a girl. When the two kids are running around the city the main protagonist is disappointed because he cannot get a chance to talk to his love interest. The girl who he is trying to talk to is constantly moving around the city with her friends. Finally, the boy gets up enough courage and talks to her and they go to a concert. The next visual motif is close ups; this motif is used to convey the character’s emotions. The emotions that the motif conveys is love, happiness, disappointment and excitement. The two visual motifs work together in order to express the emotion of love and how easy it is for two people to love each other.  The music video conveys this by making an interesting story and follows it perfectly with the two characters falling in love. 