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.

Change of Plan!

Amy and I got talking about Deja Vu, and I expressed doubts in how I wasn't sure about whether or not our planned music video would be as successful as we'd previously hoped. I was relieved to find that Amy had the same concerns and we decided that perhaps we should change the song.

In our next lesson we shared our views with Sophie, and although she wasn't worried about Deja Vu, she did agree that we should change the song if we weren't all happy and decided on the song. We recognised that we all had to be one hundred per cent content with our song selection before planning in detail. One major concern was that 3OH!3 is male, and our group is solely female. If we relied on a lead and they pulled out part way through, it could dramatically affect our music video and waste valuable, crucial time. By choosing a song with a female lead, one of the three of us could be the focus of the video and there is no way any of us would pull out.

As Amy revised, me and Sophie searched YouTube for songs lead by female vocalists. We searched: Ke$ha, Amy Studt, Pink, Avril Lavigne, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift. We knew that we should pick a song without much (preferably any) publicity, and without a current music video so that we wouldn't be subconsciously influenced.

After listening to a few tracks by Taylor Swift, we realised that she was the artist for us. All that we had to do was choose a track that followed our criteria we'd drawn up prior to choosing Deja Vu. One track that did this is: Better Than Revenge by Taylor Swift. Instantly, we both knew that this was the one we wanted to work on. The tempo, pace and story line through the lyrics were ideal for a "live" performance and was open to a strong and satisfying narrative. We called Amy over, and she agreed with us.
For the rest of the lesson, me and Sophie then began discussing possible story lines for narratives. We had very different ideas, but they all were related to a main female character plotting revenge on another female character, ultimately for 'stealing' her boyfriend. As we kept disagreeing on underdeveloped ideas, we decided that it would be best for all three of us to go away and get to know the track, and form ideas of our own ready to discuss, compare and hopefully to combine. By the next lesson, I was the only one to have started due to the others having to focus more on other subjects, so I printed off sheets with lyrics and space to write and gave them to the others to save them having to take time to organise things. I then got cracking with my own decoding of the lyrics and transforming my subjective interpretation to realistic and creative ideas.

After sleeping on it, I reached the conclusion that no matter how we did it, it would be far too confusing for our targeted audience, especially as it is all our our first attempt at a music video. I told the others how I felt and they agreed and said that it would probably be best to keep things simple to start with, and then build in professionalism through editing and swapping footage for new more advanced footage if we felt we were capable and it would improve our work.

For the rest of the lesson, I got another sheet with lyrics ready to write down all of our ideas combined to form our first proper draft.

The opening is what I'd planned, as the others hadn't got around to producing their own ideas for the introduction yet. The instrumental then, I'd figured out the timings. I said that we should introduce the "live" performance somewhere here so that everybody important is introduced early on, like in a film. They agreed, and Sophie suggested that we should have a narrative introduction too, setting the scene. Me and Amy thought that it was a good idea too, and said that we should produce a montage of footage conveying a harmonious relationship between the main female and her boyfriend. The editing should be in sync.

During the next lesson, we shared ideas. Amy had formed the idea that instead of there being one female plotting revenge on another, it would be one female angry at her split personality. Sometimes she is kind to her boyfriend and completely normal, the next minute she's like another person. I said I needed a while to get my head around this idea in relation to the entire song, so we said we'd continue next lesson.

In my free periods I planned and jotted down my ideas whilst listening to the track on my ipod. I worked out the exact timing of the introductory instrumental part, and planned an general story line. I then began thinking about how to get suitable editing and camera angles in, and focused in on locations, mise-en-scene, costuming and colour choice.