http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xg3vE8Ie_E
The video that I will be analysing is a song by a young and upcoming artist Taylor Swift – Love Story. The genre is a mix between two, which is country music, and pop to make it more commercial as country music is not that established. As well as the video being a mix of two genres there is also some broad characteristics that show that it is a country pop video with the scenery as it was filmed in a field along with a horse which also gives the audience a understanding that it is a country video. The lyrics in the video definitely illustrate the visuals as she is mainly talking about forbidden love and being in love with her love interest and sneaking off to see him in the night. “So I sneak out to the garden to see you” at this particular line we see Taylor walk into the garden with a lantern to meet her love interest in a very secretive way. Another point is when she is at the banquet as the video has a Victorian era feel to it and she first glances at her love interest “I see you make your way through the crowd, and say hello” this is when we see a close up shot of Taylor and her love interest Justin Gaston gazing at each other at the dance to show their physical attraction.
The video does incorporate a specific relationship with the visuals as the pace of the video does change when it gets to the bridge of the song. At the bridge of the song Taylor was waiting in her castle for her love interest and as the song builds up and gets faster to head back to the chorus the cuts for that particular part is just continuous. The video has many close-ups of Taylor but they also have many close-ups of her love interest as the video was filmed in a way to focus on the song, most of all. As Taylor Swift is a young and upcoming artist the close-up shots are quite frequent so her audience can feel closer to her and also so they can relate to her. The director and record company have clearly thought about the concept of the video as she has a specific fan base, which are mostly young teenage girls. As she is seen as a role model and her songs relate to young girls they have keep the video innocent yet interesting with her being the artist as well as playing a major role in the video to broaden her fan base. The record company have mainly used promotion to sell this record, which is vital when trying to sell as many records a possible. One example is Taylor Swift performing Love Story on 2009’s UK charity campaign Children In Need to make her more known in other countries apart from the USA. As well as performing she also donated £13,000 to the charity. Also in June 2009, Taylor Swift performed "Thug Story," a parody of "Love Story," with T-Pain for the CMT Music Awards and in October 2009, Swift performed "Love Story" on The Oprah Winfrey Show. The promotion has done for this song therefore made her song a global success. Taylor’s Swifts image is quite commercial but still has her own image. As she is young and very much under control by her record company her image is quite basic with the long blonde hair and blue eyes and not to heavy with the make-up because she is still young and she has to keep her innocence as long as possible. Besides that she does have a country style look with her wearing a big prom style dress with a pair of cowboy boots in one of videos which a show she is a country girl. In Love story they have made sure that there were loads of close ups and mid shot to focus on her because she is the star and her motifs have not really changed over the years.
Taylor Swifts other songs I would say that this is the video with much more of a story to it and less of a performance. Her previous videos still have that country feel to it but not as much compared to love story. Her previous singles “Picture to Burn” and “Our Song” are quite similar to an extent as the do have scenes based in a field and loads of shots of swift with a guitar which definitely identifies to the audience that she is a country singer. Although her style and image has not exceptionally change her video Love story has undeniably demonstrated her maturity because the video along with the song has become more serious.
As Swift has a fan base, which is, addressed to more of a younger audience who do look up to her so therefore the video remains strictly innocence and doesn’t display any inappropriate moments. Her costumes in the video are highly important as they make us, as an audience understand what exactly the theme of the video is and she is wearing a old fashioned Victorian style ball gown which looks like a wedding dress to show that this song is to do with being in love. Due to the costumes and setting and the story of the video we automatically see that there is a intertextual reference to William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s romantic book The Scarlett Letter which she adds reference to in the lyrics to describe a lover whom her father will not let her see. In the end, however, the father reconciles and the lover (Gaston) proposes to the female narrator (Swift). The reference to these plays is demonstrated right from the beginning as she acts out the part of Juliet quite well with the close up shots of the proposal to show the love they have for each other and the intensity within the video.
The video is a narrative and performance based as we can identify this from the very little dancing and more of the story due to the close up shots and mid shots that fill the whole video.
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