Taylor Swift Album designs

Here are three different Taylor Swift Albums designs. For our completed video we will need an albums cover to represent our work, to promote the video. Therefore one of the steps to promoting this is analyzing her previous album art.
One of the main things to notice is that she is the main focus in all of her album art. None of the albums artworks are particularly unrealistic. To make her the main focus there is nothing in the background that particularly draws the audience's eye, for example in the 1st and 4th album cover the background is a plain light colour to keep the attraction on the artist. To draw attention to the Artist she is dressed in an eye catching purple (album cover 4) or in (album cover 1) her golden hair catches the audiences attention from the particular way its displayed and the vibrance of the gold. In album cover 3 this is the only one that varies from the others as its the only one with a bright, different background. This may be because its trying to appeal and attract the target demographic, young girls. Her songs are about natural and realistic experiences, growing up, so the representation of nature, the blue for sea, the dark grassy greens for forests and the little picture of the butterfly that represents metamorphosis in people from girl to women.
In all the album covers to show the importance of the audience the artist is either snapped at a close up ( album cover 2) or a medium shot, again to keep the main focus on the artist.
The demographic is mainly for girls so the graphology is all pretty similar between them she used a classic swirly design for her name, the same style is repeated in all so therefore its become the signature of her name, this is to promote a recognizable signature for her and in turn her fans will be able to recognize her merchandise/work universally which creates a strong fan base as she will become familiar.
All her album artwork are bright and light, the beige and white colours represent her innocence and wisdom, and as her music is aimed at young girls this turns her in to the perfect role model agreeable for both the parents of the listener and agreeable with the young girls. The colour scheme also infers the tone of the majority of her work, light and happy, nothing dark and sinister. She's being represented as Americas sweetheart, the girl next door figure.
In conclusion to create our own album artwork key ideas, which are remarkably easily, the most important being including our artist in our artwork as the main focus, using either a close up or medium shot.
Another is to dress our artist in light colours like white or beige or even bright colours like purple but nothing that could be considered as "edgy" or "dark", however our song is one of Taylor's more edgier songs which shows an aggressive attitude of herself so that may be open to change.
We will most likely decide on a plain,light background to not draw the audiences attention of our artist and off course copying her Taylor swift signature so she is easily recognized.

Planning Better Than Revenge

Better than Revenge

Lyrics:
Now go stand in the corner and think about what you did
Ha, Time for a little revenge
Verse:
The story starts when it was hot and it was summer
And, I had it all; I had him right there where I wanted him
She came along, got him along, and let's hear the applause
She took him faster than you can say sabotage
I never saw it coming, nor did I suspected it
I underestimated just who I was dealing with
She had to know the pain was beating on me like a drum
She underestimated just who she was stealing from


[Chorus]
She's not a saint and she's not what you think
She's an actress, Whoa
She's better known for the things that she does
On the mattress, Whoa
Soon she's gonna find
Stealing other people's toys on the playground
Won't make you many friends
She should keep in mind,
She should keep in mind
There is nothing I do better than revenge, Ha


[Verse]
She lives her life like it's a party and she's on the list
She looks at me like I'm a trend and she's so over it
I think her ever present frown is a little troubling
And, she thinks I'm psycho
Cause I like to rhyme her name with things, but
Sophistication isn't what you wear, or who you know
Or pushing people down to get you where you wanna go
Oh they didn't teach you that in prep school
So it's up to me
But no amount of vintage dresses gives you dignity


[Chorus]
She's not a saint and she's not what you think
She's an actress, Whoa
She's better known for the things that she does
On the mattress, Whoa
Soon she's gonna find
Stealing other people's toys on the playground
Won't make you many friends
She should keep in mind,
She should keep in mind
There is nothing I do better than revenge, Ha ha




[Bridge]
I'm just another thing for you to roll your eyes at honey
You might have him, but haven't you heard
I'm just another thing for you to roll your eyes at honey
You might have him, but I always get the last word
Whoa


[Chorus]
She's not a saint and she's not what you think
She's an actress, Whoa
She's better known for the things that she does
On the mattress, Whoa
Soon she's gonna find
Stealing other people's toys on the playground
Won't make you many friends
She should keep in mind,
She should keep in mind
There is nothing I do better than revenge,


And do you still feel like you know what you're doing,
Cause I don't think you do, Oh
Do you still feel like you know what you're doing
I don't think you do, I don't think you do
Let's hear the applause
C'mon show me how much better you are
See you deserve some applause
Cause you're so much better
She took him faster than you can say sabotage

One of the first steps we took in starting the new process for brainstorming new ideas for our new video was to listen to the video together and annotating the lyrics, we did this separately and individually to gather more ideas, and then select what idea we thought was the best.

This started to build up the background of our mise en scene and particular themes. Like in Taylor Swift videos we would use the artist as the Protagonist (Emma), and as the theme of the video is revenge we would use an antagonist (Amy) to aim the revenge at to base our narrative on.
From this we decided on a short simple story line. Girl meets boy, another girl steals boy, heartbroken girls plans revenge. Themes we will portray in our video will be love, hate and jealousy.

We would also have realistic settings for example, bedrooms, school environment and some outside natural environments.  For example we thought Amy's bedroom would be good to set the Protagonist bedroom in.

The bedroom has a large spacey centre ideal for being able to use for filming, it has all the things commonly found in a typical girls bedroom, wardrobes, clothes, dresser. Another setting we decided on was using our drama room. We have a tiny budget therefore we dont have the equipment to manipulate lighting, however in the drama room they do have this equipment. In this setting we would use the artist as herself performing, and whilst she performs we can play with the red and green lights as these colours represent anger and jealousy.

Another smaller idea we had was darts hitting a dartboard with the antagonists picture on. This represents the theme of hate and we could use the darts hitting the board in time with the  drum beat at the start that counts the song in.

Taylor Swift Conventions

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.

Lip syncing editing

After filming our lip syncs we've been working on editing the range of shots together using Final Cut Express.

This helps us in preparation for our final product since we haven't used this programme before this enables us the chance to learn the basics on this practice piece so when we edit our final piece we can create a much more skillful piece without wasting to much time learning how the programme works.

So far we've edited about 50 seconds and have all been taking it in turns on the mouse so its fair and we all get a chance to learn. We've realised that there are a few things we will need to re-film to fill in time gaps, but as we use the programme more our editing skills, particularly in cutting is becoming more efficient so hopefully it won't take us too much time.

Production Name

We three have decided to produce our music video under the production name of A.S.E  productions. We decided this because it short and rememberable and represents the initials of our names. It should be pronounced in the same way as 'ace'.

Lip Syncing

For our lip syncing task we decided that we wanted something light, not very serious and with a change of tempo so that we could experiment properly. Amy originally wanted to do Dinosaur - Ke$ha we looked into that. It was fun, but after the second verse we'd all become sick of it and no longer wanted to work on it. After individually Youtubing songs Amy came across the track - Mono Mono from Madagascar 2. We chose this for several reasons, it had a good up-beat tempo but not to fast so we are able to mime the words easily. Another reason is that its repetitive therefore making it simple for us to remember the words. The song also has a certain comedy to it which also allows us to have fun and allows us to be creative in preparation for our main piece. 

Group Meeting

We first got together to come up with ideas for our music video on Thursday 21st Oct.  We discussed our intentions to reach mutual decisions about what direction we intend to aim for. We decided that:

• We don't want a slow song - we want to be able to use fast cuts so we need an upbeat track
• We don't want anything too serious; facing real issues for example - we want to have fun with this project
• None of us were biased to any particular genre, so we agreed to go away over half term and each come back with a few song ideas that match our previous decisions (fast, fun)