Music Video Analysis

Blink 182 - All The Small Things

The video uses amplacation as the video is edited to the beat of the music and the video is in sync with the song, as the band members are moving their lips in time with the vocals. Even though this video uses amplacation it is also a spoof/parody of other artist’s music videos, such as the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera. The video uses intertextuality because the audience needs to have seen the other videos All the Small Things is making reference to, to fully understand the music video.

All the Small Things has a multi-strand narrative because the video includes many different parody’s of other music videos. You also see the band performing with all their instruments which is separate from the parody’s. You can see this because the band are wearing their usual clothes which show that they belong to the pop-punk genre of music, i.e. they are wearing shorts, long socks, guitar’s played low down, and they have piercings and tattoos.

The mise-en-scene is very different in this music video because overall it has to represent other music videos that the band are making a parody of. At the beginning of the video you see blink 182, dressed to look the Backstreet Boys with their white suits and sunglasses, walking away from a white jet, with the words “Blink 182” written on it. You then see a crowd of screaming girls which then cuts to the Mark Hoppus (Bass Player) of Blink 182 dancing, making fun of the backstreet boys. Another part of the mise-en-scene that makes Blink 182 look like the Backstreet Boys is the fact they are dressed in black t-shirts with cream trousers, dancing like the Backstreet Boys on a beach. The band also parody Britney Spears, as in a couple of scenes you see Tom Delonge (Guitarist) and other band members dancing in combat clothes, designed for woman, in a dance hall. When Tom Delonge is standing beside static binoculars, and licking them, it’s making reference to Britney Spears’s music video, “Sometimes”, even the shot of the head, with the binoculars on the right, is exactly the same as the “Sometimes” video. The video makes reference to Christina Aguilera’s music video for “Genie In A Bottle”, as you see Tom Delonge laying in the sand with flowers around him.

All the Small Things is a spoof so it means that certain aspects of the mise-en-scene are going to be different than the videos the band are making reference to. For example there is a section in the video when you see Mark Tom Delonge in a white shirt, and a gold chain, with his hair being blown, however the camera moves back to find that he is actually sitting on a toilet.

The music video for All The Small Things doesn’t really use many editing techniques, because the video is trying to mimic the camera shots and editing techniques used on the music videos the band are referencing. For example a fade in to a medium long shot is used to show the band all dressed in white at the beginning of the video and a tracking shot is used to show the crowd of screaming girls. A lot of low angle tracking shots are used also, making reference to many of Britney Spears’s music videos. Also a fade is used once or twice in the video to make a transition to the next shot. Another commonly used editing techniques are cut zoom ins, and cut zoom outs, to either focus on a certain band members face, or to focus on the whole band performing etc.