2. The music video I am analysing is ‘Fifteen’ by Taylor Swift . The
video was directed by Roman White. The song was released on
September 1, 2009 by Big Machine Records.

3. The genre for the song is county/pop. The typical conventions
for country/pop music videos are; bright colours, close ups and
extreme close ups, costume changes, dance sequences, lip
synching and there is usually a lack of instruments.

4. ‘Fifteen’ is uncommon to pop video's as it breaks and challenges the
traditional conventions of a pop video. It does this by using Taylor’s star
image (instrument playing) as an advantage.

5. This is a narrative based video with elements of performance.

6. ‘Fifteen’ meets the common pop conventions by having a
relationship between the lyrics and visuals. Throughout the song
there are many examples. The first example is when Taylor sings
‘you walk through the doors’ and on screen Taylor walks through
the door. Another example of this is ‘You sit in class next to a
redhead named Abigail’ when this is sang, a redhead girl appears
on screen.
One more example of this is when the word ‘night’ is sang, on
screen, night appears.

7. Like usual pop videos, ‘Fifteen’ uses extreme close ups and close
ups of the artist. The extreme close ups of Taylor singing are
used in this video to engage the target audience as if she is
singing to them personally. Extreme close ups are also used to
show Taylor playing her guitar, this is to allow her audience to see
that she is a talented musician, whilst again linking with her star
image. An establishing shot is used at the start of the video to
create the setting for song.

8. ‘Fifteen’ is very similar to the style of video commonly used by Taylor, by
which, the clothes she wears, the performance based shots, and her
appearance are traditional to her niche. This creates Taylor’s star image to help
her sell her albums. Her hair is again in blonde curls.

9. When the song starts Taylor uses notion of looking to flashback to when she
was 15. She does this by looking at and old photo of her and her best friend.
The song then flashes back to the real world at the end and shows Taylor
standing in the rain at her old school. The camera focuses on a girl in the
school playground to show Taylor singing to the girl because she doesn’t want
her to make the same mistakes as she did when she was 15 herself and asif
she is speaking from past experience.

10. The song is split into two halves. The first half uses the pop
conventions of being bright and happy with the sun out, whereas
the second half of the song uses dark colours, pathetic fallacies
and the rain is pouring. This again matches lyrics to visuals, as the
first half is the song is happy and the second half is sad. The
video cleverly uses the weather and colours to address this.
The second half of the song is unhappy and sad. This is shown
through a variety of ways. A pathetic fallacy illustrates this as
when the girls are upset the weather is raining and the sky is dark
just asif it is in sympathy with her. And at the end of the song
Taylor is dressed in black. Black is a colour which symbolises
sadness.