SHOT DECONSTRUCTION OF MUSIC VIDEO:

Taylor swift’s ‘Love story’ was produced by Nathan Chapman, with the lyrics being subject to Swift’s writing ability. It was released on September 12th , in 2008, as a lead single in Taylors album ‘Fearless’.

The plot and synopsis of the music video resembles that of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet Romantic Phemonoma, with references to forbidden love, and hiding romances from family relatives, which is further reflected through the lyrics of

the song.

This song is among the best selling singles of all time, and sold over 5.8 million paid digital downloads.

I feel this song is a good one to analyse for my exisiting product analysis because I feel it is very supportive of many concepts and theories within the media, for example Propps narrative theory, and gender regimes and classification

being supportive of feminist media critiques such as Mulvey and Freidan.

It follows quite a specific genre, country pop, and was extremely available to a wide audience.Being one of the best selling singles, especially with the music video being primarily a big part of this success I think it

would be very beneficial for me to analyse these conventions to include in my own music video, thus attracting and appealing to a wider target audience and increasing the success of my video.

TAYLOR SWIFT- LOVE STORY

This close up tight frame shot is effective in representing the main character, played by the artist Taylor Swift as powerful and important. This is shown because the close up, emphasises the facial code and features of Swift which suggests that the audience is supposed to look at her, thus emphasising her importance. In addition to this the tight frame shot, restricts the audience looking at other elements in the background of the shot which therefore suggests that full viewing focus should be directed at ‘Swift’ again further emphasising her importance over the other elements in the shot. This could arguably suggest a modern women and contradict to the typical media stereotypes and representations of women as she is shown as powerful and important despite being a women, whom are often respresentated as having little or less importance, however contrastingly the close up shot of which highlights her facial features and hair, accompanied by high key lighting contouring her face, could suggest that we are in fact admiring her beauty, supporting Mulveys Male gaze theory that the media is constructed for the male viewing of men, thus describes why she is at the centre of the rule of thirds frame, this idea of admiration and beauty also would be confirmative to the time era, and genre, for example this music video is considerably correspondent to Romeo and Juliet (1957) of which was a time when women's beauty was of the utmost importance, these conventions of which are supportive of the time era of which this music video is set, and thus applying/conforming to certain expectations of this time period, would therefore enable the audience to decode the genre, leading to the established target audience buying the product, as “one way of defining genre is a set of expectations” (Neale 1980)

This medium close up shot, is important in conforming to expectations both in terms of gender but also in terms of the time era of which it is set, demonstrating how this music video conforms to the genre and theme. In this shot audience are able to encode the similarities between the story of Romeo and Juliet, and the connotations associated with this song. The music video is well similar to this, as due to the medium close up nature, emphasising the mise-en-cence costume code we are able to examine the style and embroidery of the costumes worn as a way of establishing that this music video is set in an era different from this. Furthermore this is emphasised by the mise-en-cence and props used in the surrounding perimeter of the shot, for exam[le the tapestry shown hanging on the wall behind the couple, would also be conventional of the time period of which it is set, further reinforcing the theme and genre, enabling the music video to have similarities linked with Shakespeare times and also appeal to the intended target audience. The level shot, and eye line match editing could be contradictory of the typical representation of women within music videos, for example because the camera shows the man and women equally on the same level, we can infer that they are of equal powers and authority however due to historical information we can understand that during the time of which this music video was set this was not the case, thus for this reason we can question the validity of this music video in its arguably false representation of a time period and also question whether swift was taking a postmodernist twist, challenging the traditional women, with a postmodern women, as if to foreshadow the future, in reference to the equality we have now, in todays society. In addition the slightly dimmed mise-en-cence lighting adds a dreamy, evening feel of which is often associated with romance further being typical of the Romeo and Juliet theme and genre, ensuring it appeals to the target audience.

This loose frame shot is also confomrative of the genre and theme of this music video, as it enables a clear view of the mise-en-cence costume code of which is clearly associated with the time period of which the music video is aiming to signify. Furthermore the mise-en-cence shown clearly due to the loose frame nature of this shot, is an conformative expectation of which supports the fairy-tale nature and genre of this music video, for example a white horse is a re-occuring motif present in a lot of fairy-tale stories thus further emphasising the theme and genre, thus attracting the intended target audience. The couple are centre of the rule of thirds, thus we are drawn to them as the main characters and importance of the shot, in addition this gives the audience scope to infer the body language shown by both the man and woman in the shot, for example the man has his fists slightly clenched and stands slightly forward than ‘swift’ and the horse suggesting his male brave and protective nature, conforming to the media’s typical stereotype of men, and furthering the view that women are weak and vulnerable and in need of male protection. This shot is also supportive of Propp’s view as due to the mise-en-cence costume code, we can infer that swift is demonstrating the role of ‘princess’, with the protective body language of the male enabling us to see him as the ‘hero’ of Propp's character classifications.