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.
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