Synopsis
The Police perform in a bleak, post-apocalyptic landscape built from towering heaps of guitars, drums, car parts, wires, and industrial debris. Each member occupies a separate scaffolding platform as wind, paper, smoke, and artificial mist whip through the set. The performance is interrupted by eerie images of Loch Ness, linking the band's dystopian surroundings to the song's parallel story of a creature emerging from a dark Scottish loch. The result is a visually aggressive counterpart to the song's themes of pressure, alienation, and impending release.
Factoids & Trivia
- The video was filmed on a soundstage on the outskirts of London rather than at Loch Ness. The Scottish location was represented through inserted footage of the loch.
- Air blowers and dry ice were used to create the stormy, fog-filled atmosphere, while the set was dressed with junk, car parts, musical instruments, cables, and scattered papers.
- Andy Summers plays a Gittler guitar, an exceptionally minimalist instrument with a bare metal frame instead of a conventional wooden body. Its unusual appearance made it one of the video's most recognizable visual details and helped bring the obscure instrument wider attention.
- During filming, the scaffolding tower used by Stewart Copeland caught fire. The crew reportedly began leaving the building, but the cameras continued rolling to capture the incident.
- The video's visual approach reflects the song's contrast between ordinary domestic and workplace frustration and the threatening, almost mythic image of something emerging from the loch.
- "Synchronicity II" was the third single from the Police's 1983 album Synchronicity and reached the Top 20 in both the United Kingdom and the United States.