Taylor Swift Music Videos anyalsis

Narrative reflects lyrics
One key feature that we've noticed in Taylor swift music videos is that the lyrics typically reflect the lyrics for example in "back to december" the setting is placed in a winter season which the audience will link to with the snow. In "you belong with me" the narrative is based around the lyrics "she's cheer captain and i'm on the bleachers", which shown above Taylor is dressed in a bleachers uniform performing with them.

"Decemeber"

Artist included in narrative

Taylor swift is usually always included in the narrative particularly as the protagonist except for in fifteen, where she seems to travel through the narrative and interact with it rather than being apart of      the story line, show in You belong with me below, and particularly always plays the part of the love interest or victim, however in this she is both protagonist and the antagonist . She also always lip-syncs in her video

 "You belong with me"

Pathetic Fallacy
Another method she uses is pathetic fallacy to signal to the audience the mood of the song. For example in Mine the season is clearly summer or spring inferred by the bright sunny blue sky, the green tree's, Taylor's sun kissed lighting on her skin and her outfit. This could be connoted by the audience as a happy song

"Mine"

In her song White horse the song reflects sadness and the weather and lightning dictate this to the audience, The camera focuses on the dark gray rain at the beginning of the video signaling to the audience the mood of the song and carried through out the song with the dark lighting. This could be something we can consider and would like to be however we can't manipulate the weather.

 "White horse"

Mise en scene
Another thing to focus on is the mise en scene. Taylor swift is usually always in a realistic setting apart from the exception of her video 15. Typical settings are school themed like an American football pitch, hallway or a school prom. Other settings are homes, particular the bedroom or the garden and pretty scenery like forests or lakes. These are typical example of what is shown in  "you belong with me" , "tear drops of my guitar" and "mine". This is something that our group will definitely decide on to be similar, it also works to our advantage as we do not t he resources to make our own unique sets. We can easily use our own school and local parks to film our video.

Taylor Swift

The artist we decided on has been Taylor Swift, therefore i shall make a general overview of how she is represented and the conventions of her music videos.
Main themes that music videos are focused around are the lyrics, which most of her songs are based around innocent young relationships, most of her videos reflect the story of the song. For example this happens with "you belong with me" where the characters imitate the lyrics "she's cheer captain, and i'm on the bleachers" the main character is performing in a bleachers uniform whilst the other character is cheering. This happens again in "Back to december", the setting is set in a cold winter season where there is lots of snow around which the audience will connote with December.
Another key feature if a Taylor Swift video is that she appears to always be included in the narrative,usually the main character, this happens in "you belong with me", "Back to December" "Tear drops on my guitar" and "mine. Also in the narrative she lip syncs which happen in all her videos, this is something we will definitely use in our production.
Another feature in the videos she uses is pathetic fallacy, the mood of the song is reflected by the weather for example  in mine the song is happy therefore filled with lots of bright sun and when the sadder moments are shown they are shown with a darker tint or shown in a dark setting, like at night in a badly lighted garden. This also happen in white horse, at the start of the video it focuses on the grey rain coming down on the window foreshadowing to the audience the sad nature of the song before the song even begins. In the video "Fifteen" the background is cloudy covering the sun but it slightly shows,  this could be interpreted as the hopefulness of the song, or even an extended metaphor of the, not completely understanding the world as a naive fifteen year old girl, therefore clouded judgement and when it rains it symbolizes the pain of the character.
Most of her video's feature an artist set however few times she is shown actually performing with her guitar, but this does happen in "fearless" , "fifteen"and change features a whole band set which our group may want to consider including to create more contrast in our video.
The sets are also typically realistic, with exception of "fifteen" where there is a typical fairy-tale mood to it as the artist set transforms in to the narrative and the graphics are made by computer editing, for example a door appears in a scene of clouds which then transforms in to a school. However most sets are typically set in houses like "you belong with me" in the bedroom, "tear drops on my guitar" a school environment and "mine" at a lakeside.
These features we should all take in to account when we plan our video.

Postmodernism

Postmodernism eclectic, it uses ideas and themes from other sources to combine them to create something new.
Its often self referential however it  frequently uses allusions and inter-textuality which gains the audiences attention by engaging with them therefore the target audience is someone who's literate of other media texts so they would understand the meaning.

One example of this is The Clashes album cover art  allusion to Elvis Presley's album art.
In this we see the Clash use the same style font and colouring plus also use a black and white in action photograph to promote their album.

To understand this there are three types of of allusion, parody, satire and pastiche.

A parody is used to mock a text, satire is to create a political statement and pastiche is a homage (celebration) of the text.

In this particular example it would be pastiche as they are celebrating Elvis Presley's great achievements in music who is commonly referred to the "King of Rock 'n' Roll" therefore its most likely to assume The Clash are paying respect to him as he is one of there inspirations and they      
                                                                              wouldn't be creating the same music if it weren't for                        
                                                                                 him.

Modernism

Modernisation is the viewed as the ultimate experimentation in media which emerged in the late in the 1900's till the 1950's.

It's aim was to break the boundaries and conventions of all forms of media which will completely distinguished itself from anything of its type, these commonly caused controversy. 

Modernization is though of elitist, appealing to only the most educated as those who were educated were the only ones to understand the messages conveyed through the media pieces. 

Modernization came to an end in the 1950's when it was felt that there was nothing new to experiment with and create, following this postmodernisation was formed. 

Preliminary Lipsync

In our group we chose to do our practice lip-sync to Chunky, a featured song on the film Madagascar by Will.I.Am.
Through out the production of this i learnt several things.
First of all it was how to use the cameras and the use of the tripods to create the desired angle which is useful to keep the camera steady and if there is no free hands spare.
This also helped me reinforce my knowledge about camera angles having to think oh what type of angles would be best and to accumulate more ideas to use for our final piece.
The area that i learnt most in was the editing process using the software Final Cut Express. I learnt the basics of the process for example the components of the software like the browser, viewer, canvas, timeline etc. I learnt how to import,capture and render our video clips. I learnt how to cut the clips, we all took a fair share on editing the video so everyone learnt the basics of it. We also learnt useful parts of the program like the In and Out points which make editing the clips much easier and efficient which will help greatly in our final product. We also spent a small time browsing on the effects we could use but this really was the benefit for our next piece rather than our current.
All in all it was a successful practice though their were a few minor slip ups when we were recording, however for that next time we know that its important to make the recording as perfect as possible so that it does not need to be redone as this is slightly annoying and time consuming.

Eminem music video Analysis

The main concept of this video is to reflect the emotions of the lyrics, its a song about about abuse. This text is encoded with numerous codes to reflect these emotions, for example the fire which is shown continually through the video, during performance and narrative, can be decoded to read as the reflection of anger, passion and destruction in the relationship between the narrative characters.

 When the artist is in the meadow this can be decoded as liberty, freedom, that he's escaped from a claustrophobic, destructive relationship, the freedom is emphasized even more by the use of the camera shots as the tilting camera and the use of it panning around the endless scene of grass and sky gives the audience a better sense of the space he now has, and the sun behind him can be perceived as his own enlightenment.

In this video the artist's lip sync in to camera which is a typical convention, however in this video but also in this video they use a broken convention, in a moment of the narrative the characters lip sync to "I'm leaving you" "No you ain't".

The video also uses the iconic image of Eminem by his clothing him in a white tank top, this conveys his genre (hip hop/rap) but also its a device used to create recognition and familiarity with the artist to increase his popularity.

Like a typical convention of music videos, the editing is synced in time with the rhythm/beat for example the edit is made when the female character opens her eyes, the next beat it cuts to the scene with the artist.

This video also does not demonstrate temporal continuity, it's not in chronological order as the video cuts between the past and the present making the audience aware that they are engaged with a text.