Video Analysis 2: All Time Low - "Weightless"

Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nBA2OSZnS0

The video for Weightless is again a mix of narrative and performance. The video’s main gimmick is captions which appear on screen insulting various fans seen throughout the video, the band themselves, and some members of their road crew. At several points throughout the video, the phrase “Nothing Personal” appears on screen, which is the title of the album this song is taken from. The video opens with a shot of five women gathered around the band’s lead singer Alex Gaskarth, all talking over each other at once. Gaskarth is seemingly indifferent to their advances, which the women don’t seem to notice. The video then cuts to a point of view shot from Gaskarth’s perspective, and behind the five women, the first few captions appear on the screen, labelling the women as “Tease”, “Stalker”, “Obsessed”, “Lunatic” and “Neurotic Super Fan”. The screen cuts back to Gaskarth, who rubs his eyes, as if trying to remove the captions from his vision, then the screen cuts back to the POV shot showing the first woman, above whom a new caption appears, “Get a restraining order on her”. As Gaskarth looks across the women again, another two are labelled as “She only wants your body” and “She only wants you money”, and the intro of the song begins, drowning out the girl’s chatter. The screen cuts back to Gaskarth who begins to sing. The camera moves back as Gaskarth moves forward, following him as the words “Backstage groupies freak me out” appear around him. The rest of the band walk into shot behind him, and as they walk through the group of girls, some of the earlier captions appear again along with the first appearance of the words “Nothing Personal” in front of Gaskarth. The camera pans around in a transition shot, and we see a door by the side of a stage, through which the band emerge, taking their instruments from a tech guy on the side of the stage. As the lead guitarist, Jack Barakat, takes his guitar, the caption “My tech can barely tune a guitar” appears. The camera cuts to a POV shot from Barakat’s point of view, and as the tech guy hands over the instrument, his thoughts appear as “This guy can barely play a guitar”. We see a shot of an All Time Low banner being erected behind the stage, before cutting back to the shot of Barakat and the tech guy, in front of whom the words “Nothing Personal” appear once again. The camera pans to the crowd, showing two fans stood still amongst the otherwise active crowd, one of whom is yawning, and around these two the words “More like All Time Blow” appear. This is when the first performance section appears, as the camera pans around 180 and shows the band on stage, going into a close up of Gaskarth singing into the mic. Quick close-up shots of all four band members are shown during the bridge, then a succession of quick cuts are used as the band go into the chorus. A camera starts in the crowd and moves forwards to the front, closing in on Gaskarth singing. The shot changes quickly to a high angle view of Gaskarth, to a long shot from behind the crowd, to a shot of someone standing on the stage beside Barakat. The caption “Standing on stage doesn’t make you cool” appears around them, before Bakarat punches them off of the stage. There are a few more quick cuts between members of the band playing and singing, before panning to an unenthusiastic fan in the crowd wearing a Fall out Boy t-shirt, complete with an “I’d rather be watching Fall Out Boy” caption. This is the first example of references to other artists, which will be revisited later in the video. The remainder of the chorus section is taken up with quick cuts between members of the band, and a shot from behind the crowd of the entire band. Into the start of the second verse, there is a shot of a woman walking back through the crowd with a smaller “I need band shirts” caption. There is a pan around to a merchandise seller playing air guitar, with “Merch guy wishes he was in the band” as a main caption. As he holds a t-shirt out towards the camera, a secondary smaller caption of “overpriced” appears next to the shirt. There are more quick cuts between close up shots of the band members, along with a shot of the woman buying her t-shirt with “I don’t tip creepy merch guys” as a caption. A few more fans are seen walking in, including a shirtless man whom the camera focuses on, with a caption of “your embarrassing tattoos will last forever”. One of his tattoos, across his stomach, is once again the title “Nothing Personal”. The group who just entered are now focused on, with oversized v-neck t-shirts on, and the main caption of “Nice v-neck, idiot” with arrows pointing to all three of them. Secondary smaller captions appear around the shirts with “too deep” around them. As the song enters the second chorus, the theme of quick cuts between and around various band members is re-entered, along with a shot of the tattooed fan ad one of the v-neck wearing fans embracing, with “fake bro hug” appearing as a caption. A group of girls walk past them with the caption coming from the lead girl of “band slut”. A group of people are seen on their phones, with small captions coming from each showing what they are typing, along with a large caption above all of them, “No-one cares what you’re doing right now”. This is shown with an intent to lampoon social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and people who update these sites too often. The remainder of the chorus is played out with more shots of the band. As the chorus finishes, the four girls from earlier are shown in a point-of-view shot being allowed through a velvet rope, with “band slut” coming as a caption from all of them as they pass. After more shots of the band, the camera shows the four of them again, this time from behind, being allowed through by a crew member holding up backstage passes, smiling knowingly as the caption “Good personalities don’t get you backstage” appears around him. A shot from backstage is shown, displaying the four girls entering a dressing room. As each passes the camera in turn, a red caption of the name “Jack” with love hearts around it pops up beside them. The camera then pans around to show Barakat, with a quick small caption of “Ut-oh” appearing next to his head, before the four girls push him through a door which swings shut behind them, revealing the words “Sleeping with band dudes doesn’t make you famous” on the outside. The door opens a touch, and a sign is hung on the outside handle, which is written in the style of Do Not Disturb signs, but instead reads “Nothing Personal”. The camera cuts to Gaskarth playing on stage, before cutting again back to the backstage area, showing a member of the road crew lifting weights with a “No struggle” caption. Another crew member enters, staring at the first man for a few seconds as the caption “All this working out is getting weird” appears alongside him. Another couple of quick cuts go back to the stage before showing drummer Rian Dawson signing photos for fans backstage. The words “internet leaked photo” appear from a couple of the pictures held by the fans, before showing Rian’s thoughts as he hands the photo back as “I’m scared of what you’re going to do with this photo”. The camera cuts via the stage again, to Gaskarth stood backstage being massaged by three people. As he stares directly into the camera and continues to sing the song’s slow bridge, the words “Lead singers are pampered too much” appear in front of him, before being replaced with “Nothing Personal”. As the band enter the final chorus, the intertextuality references to other bands return strongly, as Pete Wentz, a member of the band Fall Out Boy, is shown typing on his phone, with a caption showing he is updating his twitter feed with a message to Blink-182 member Mark Hoppus saying “ATL rips off FOB soo bad”. The camera pans past him to the man sat at a table behind him, revealed to be Hoppus himself, with the caption “Dude, both ATL and FOB rip off blink-182” as he puts his head into his hand. A girl wearing sunglasses is shown in the crowd, supposedly looking attractive, until she removes her sunglasses to reveal large, discoloured eyes, with the caption “Yikes! Big sunglasses can hide a lot” appearing next to her. Another crowd shot is shown, this time with Barakat crowd-surfing above them and a caption linked to him of “Jack’s a loser”. The remainder of the video shows the rest of the band playing on stage. As the music fades, the shot from behind the crowd is shown once more, with various “Loser” captions appearing above the crowd members and all four members of the band. , before panning down into black, at which point the video ends with the words “Nothing Personal” appearing in large font. The captions are supposed to be showing what would happen if people could actually know our internal thoughts and what we really thought about them. The phrase “Nothing Personal” appears throughout the video both to lampoon it’s over-usage as a way to apologize without really being sorry, and to promote the at the time upcoming album which is entitled Nothing Personal.

Video Analysis 1: Theory Of A Deadman - "Hate My Life"

Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfnAOcBirAs

The video for Hate My Life is a mixture of narrative and performance, but the interesting concept of the video is that each image in the video, until the final performance section, is a direct representation of the lyrics of the song. The video opens with a shot of a homeless man refusing change from the band’s lead singer, Tyler Connolly, as he is talking on a mobile phone. This leads into the opening line of the song, as Connolly turns to the camera and sings the line, “So sick of the hobos, always begging for change...” he begins walking down the street, and the camera follows him, as it will do for much of the rest of the video, and as he sings the line “I hate all of the people who can’t drive their cars”, a car screeches to a halt in front of him having nearly hit him, and he slams his hands down on the bonnet before walking on. As he sings a lyric about his wife always wanting “to buy brand new things, but I don’t have the cash”, a woman walks out of a house, kisses him on the cheek, takes his wallet from him and gets into a car, driving away. As the song goes into the first chorus, the camera zooms into a close-up shot of Connolly singing, then performs a 360 turn around him as he sings the remainder of the chorus. As he goes into the second verse, a woman carrying a box of clothing with “laundry” on the side, is knocked over by a man going past on a bicycle. As he helps the woman pick up her items, he picks up an item of negligee, at which point the woman pushes him away in disgust. During this segment, he sings the lines “How come I never get laid, nice guys always lose”, showing that in an attempt to help the woman, he is rejected. In a slight change to the format of Connolly telling the story, the camera pans sideways to a group of workmen as the line “I still hate my job” is sung, at which point one of the workers turns to the camera and sings the line in question. His fellow worker begins to sing the next line, “My boss is a dick”, but before he can complete the lyric, the first worker puts a hand over his mouth and turns his head back, pointing out that their boss is in close vicinity. The camera pans back to following Connolly, as he begins to sing the second chorus, but as he finishes the chorus with the eponymous line “I Hate My Life”, a banner is hung over a balcony behind him by two people which displays the words “I hate my life”. As the song goes into a short musical section, the camera cuts to a large stage set up in the centre of the street, with balloons, party banners and confetti strewn across it in a party, an antonymic image of the song’s lyrical theme. The remaining members of Theory Of A Deadman are on the stage playing the song, and we see Connolly jump up onto the stage, take a guitar from someone on the side of the stage and begin playing with the rest of the band. Interspersed with this are shots of various people gathering around the stage, including some of the characters already seen previously, some of whom are carrying signs with “I Hate My Life” written on them, continuing the contrasting image of a party based around this theme. The remainder of the video is taken up with the gathering crowd getting larger and larger as the band sing the rest of the song. As the band finish playing, the camera turns in the opposite direction from the stage, showing a huge crowd filling the entire street cheering and applauding, before the final shot of the video, in which the camera turns up to the sky to reveal the words “I Hate My Life” in skywriting before the screen fades to black.

Tour Poster Analysis 3

This is a more simplistic example of a tour poster when compared to the previous two that I have analysed. This poster’s main focus is purely the band in question, Muse, and their European tour. The bulk of the image is taken up by recognizable images for the band – their brand logo across the top of the poster, then a picture showing the members of the band performing on stage. The reasoning behind this is simply that by the time of this tour, 2003, Muse were a huge brand within Europe, with three UK top 10 albums, the latter two of which were both number 1s, and several top 10 singles which had received widespread radio airplay. They were even at this stage a confirmed headline act for the following year’s Glastonbury Festival. All this meant that their name and image power was enough to sell tickets across all venues easily and quickly, without having to have much in the way of an advertising gimmick to help push their tour or announcements of support bands to aid ticket sales. The lower section of the poster is taken up by a full list of all European venues they would be playing and the corresponding dates, so that this poster could be mass produced and replicated right across the continent, saving on advertising and production costs.

Tour Poster Analysis 2

The top half of the poster for “The Young Wild Things Tour” is given over to displaying the tour name and the artists featured on the tour. The headline act, Fall Out Boy, are listed as a headline on the poster, with the band name in a large version of their brand’s typical font, recognizable as it is used on CD Covers, their website etc. Below this, the three support acts are listed, with Gym Class Heroes listed in a font which is only slightly smaller than the headline act, as they are the main support on the tour, then the other two support acts, Plain White T’s and Cute Is What We Aim For, are listed below this as the secondary support groups. All of the support bands are also listed in their own brand font, which has a dual effect aimed to benefit all of the artists involved. Any fans of the support bands will recognize the bands more easily in passing as the artists are written in logos, and therefore this will aid ticket sales for the tour, benefitting the headline act. Simultaneously, fans of Fall Out Boy who see the tour and enjoy the support bands will recognize the names and logos in future, therefore providing new fans for the support bands ad raising their profiles in the American music scene. The centre of the poster is given over to an image showing the members of Fall Out Boy as animated characters in the style of the famous story “Where The Wild Things Are”. This is where the inspiration for the title of the tour came from, and so the image is being used to relate to the headline across the top of the poster. As this is a newer tour poster, the image displayed here is actually an online tour poster, so the base of the poster is taken up by advertisements for the websites of the various tour sponsors, plus a pair of hyperlink sections, one taking the observer to Fall Out Boy’s official website, the other to a link where you can buy tickets for the tour.

Tour Poster Analysis 1

The banner headline on the tour poster proclaims that it is for the “Glamour Kills Tour”. Glamour Kills is a brand of clothing popular in America, and they were the main sponsors for the tour, hence why they take the title of the tour and are featured so heavily on the poster. The headline band for the tour, All Time Low, are featured just below the title, with a hand drawn version of their logo as the central image, surrounded by various hand drawn images and doodles. This is made to be recognizable as the album which was released before this tour, Nothing Personal, featured similar images in the same style. Below this, the main support band, We The Kings, also have their logo featured as they are recognizable in America, so this will aid in promotion of the tour. The other two support bands on the tour are then featured in a stylized handwritten font to match the designs. At the base of the poster, an image of the headlining band is employed as they are recognizable faces in America, and their image being included will further aid promotion of the tour. Also, all four members of the band are wearing Glamour Kills clothing, in a promotional push for the tour’s sponsors. Finally, the bottom of the poster includes a date for the specific show which it is advertising, along with ticketing details, so that potential customers will instantly know how to obtain tickets for the show. There is also another sponsors’ logo in the bottom left corner of the poster.