Week Four: Lydia's Textual Analysis of Fall Out Boy's 'A Little Less Sixteen Candles...'

Music Video Narrative:
The four band members are acting as vampire hunters, searching for vampires in a city over-run with them. Within the group of vampire hunters, one of them, played by Pete Wentz, is a vampire himself with an obvious distaste for his own kind. There appears to be two rival groups of vampires, each with their own leader. The aristocratic dressed vampire, adorned in jewels and furs, turned Pete Wentz’s character into a vampire as is displayed in flashbacks.

Genre Characteristics:
The genre of this music video is ‘pop rock’. All the band members are young men; this is typical of the genre. Guitars, bass guitars and drums are shown frequently throughout the music video, another characteristic typical to the genre.

Relationship between visuals and lyrics:
The lyric, ‘kiss her’ is spoken within the video at approximately 2:30 minutes. The vampires are gathered in a group, urging Wentz’s character to drink from her. The lyric, ‘Why don’t you just drop dead’ is also synchronised with the action at 4:45 minutes, when a battle between Wentz’s character and the other vampires ensues.

Relationship between music and visuals:
The first time the full band performs is at 1:25 minutes. The music is synchronous with the band playing on screen. This continues on, spliced with scenes of Wentz’s character emerging from his sleeping quarter under the floor. The last band scene is at 3:30 minutes, and from then on the music video consists purely of the action between the two vampire covens and the vampire hunters.

Close-ups and Image Motifs:
The first band member, or ‘vampire hunter’ as depicted in the video, to receive a close-up is the lead guitarist, Joe Trohman at 0:27 seconds. The next band member to receive a close-up is drummer Andy Hurley at 0:45 seconds. Then, Pete Wentz’s close-up is third at 1:12 minutes. Then finally at 3:33 minutes, the lead vocalist, Patrick Stump receives his close-up. They are not many close-ups within the whole music video, as most of the shots are mid-shots so as to show the band members playing their instruments.

At the beginning of the music video, the video is introduced by a shot of the city along with the song’s title and the band’s name in blood red lettering. This is much like the beginning of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, whom Fall Out Boy claim as one of their influences.

Intertextual References:
The opening scene of the music video is a direct parody from the film, ‘The Lost Boys’. The video’s style is also similar to the Blade Trinity films.

~Over and out. ;D