This music video is strongly narrative based which is often typical of a pop song. The storyline is that Taylor’s character is in love with her best friend who already has a girlfriend, she tries to tell him that ‘he belongs with her’ but never gets the chance, then he realises that his girlfriend is not the girl for him and admits that he’s in love with Taylor’s character.
The visuals of this video link in with the lyrics of the song because the song is describing how Taylor feels about this guy, that she has always been there for him and that they should be together and the video is simply acting this out. Throughout the music video there is a theme of comedy as her audience is likely to be relatively young, e.g. the scene where Taylor is in her bedroom dancing around and singing to her own song into a hairbrush. This can be seen as quite comical because she is lip syncing to the song but in a way that is seen almost as a guilty pleasure-singing out loud to yourself. She then goes on to dress up as the popular girlfriend of the male character, as well as acting out the innocent best friend of the male character. When Taylor has her natural blonde curls she is seen as the innocent ‘geek’ that everyone is rooting for in the music video, but when she wears a brunette, straight wig she is seen as the ‘bitchy’ girlfriend that none of the audience like because she is stopping Taylor and the male character from being together.
Costume plays a big part on this music video because Taylor is not only acting out two characters, but both of the characters that she is portraying are complete stereotypes. Firstly, the geeky character-for this role Taylor is seen wearing overly large glasses and quite plain, simple clothes such as jeans and a jumper in the bench seen. Her hair also tends to be quite messy when she is playing the geek role. This contrasts however with the cheerleader girlfriend role that she also portrays. This role, again, is vey stereotypical because of the costume. This character is seen as very glamorous because she has the straight, brunette hair that is very neat and tidy, she also wears lip gloss and obvious amounts of makeup in most scenes and is seen wearing quite revealing outfits such as her prom outfit in the last scene. Alongside this, there is also the ‘ugly duckling’ moment where the geeky character takes off her glasses and goes to the prom looking almost princess-like. The costume here is very important because she has changed from this geeky character to someone who everyone can’t take their eyes off of. Her hair in this prom this scene is very tame; she still has the blonde curls that the singer is well known for but her hair is no longer frizzy or ‘out of control’. Also, the dress that her character is wearing is white which could be seen as representing ‘good’ because white has many positive connotations such as pure and heavenly and in contrast, the evil character in this music video (the cheerleader girlfriend) is wearing red which has many negative connotations, so the audience will associate the girlfriend with negative connotations and the geeky character with positive connotations.
Considering the filming and editing of this music video, there are many point of view shots at the beginning of the video and further on in the video in the scene where a conversation on notepads is taking place between the male character and the ‘geek’ character through the window. These point of view shots make the audience feel as though they are involved and it is more likely to make them rot for the geeky character because they will feel more connected with this character, especially since Taylor Swift’s audience are younger teens. During the chorus there is also quite a few short takes which is mostly done to match the tempo of the music because it speeds up throughout the chorus. Towards the end however, there are more longer takes because, not only is it to match the pace of the music, but it almost acts a slow motion device so that everyone can take in how different she looks and it shows how everyone’s eyes are on her.
I think the music video promotes the song well because, considering her target audience is young teens, the storyline almost acts as a fantasy towards her audience-that the girl gets the guy in the end. She could maybe even have fans who can relate to the storyline and so would probably be more likely to listen to the song and want to buy it because it relates to their life at that point in time.
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