Taylor Swift - Teardrops on my Guitar

Name of Music Video: “Teardrops on my Guitar”

Artist: Taylor Swift

Release Date: 2007



Throughout “Teardrops on my Guitar” there are two prominent locations: a school setting and a home setting. The audience are introduced to locations in which they are familiar with and therefore can relate with. Although both of these situations are familiar, they won’t necessarily create a comfortable tone to the video for certain audience members; however it could create a form of escapism as the audience member can replace the artist with themselves, because the story is common: girl loves boy, boy doesn’t realise and loves someone else; and the location is familiar but perhaps different to their previous experiences.

Building on ideas from "Teardrops on my Guitar" I used different locations some that would be familiar to a broad audience, but others that would only be familiar to the target audience for Blighters; for instance, a gig setting and a non-commercialised coffee shop. As Blighters have a specific target audience in the age range of 16-25 and that would, perhaps, prefer independent quirky music and independent arthouse films, such as "Once", I decided that using a non-commercialised coffee shop and a gig would best represent the genre. However, in order to not alienate a large proportion of the audience, I used a narrative that was relatable and similar to that of "Teardrops on my Guitar" and similar to Swift I cast actors that would were average and normal; that the audience could replace themselves with, so that the audience could engage with the video on a different level other than the music.

Using a mixture of narrative and performance places the artist in a storyteller position, especially in this video as the lyrics run parallel with the narrative and performance. When the artist is within the home setting, it is as though she is telling a personal story to the audience, making them her confidantes; this effect is constructed through a variety of close-ups and extreme close-ups because it is as though the audience are getting close to her and she is whispering the story to them. By looking at the camera, she is drawing the audience in and engaging them, because it is as she continues to tell her story when she does this, which suggests it is only you she is telling.

The mixture of narrative and performance was an influential factor when creating our music video, as I have strong narrative and performance within our video. The idea of having being able to have characters that connect with the audience was also important, which is another way that this video helped; I wanted our characters to have the same connection that Swift has with her audience. The predominant difference being that I didn't use the characters as the performers, however they were in the performance space, and this familiarised them with the audience. Also, I used close-ups of the band; because the audience weren't able to see their faces they weren't able to connect with them on the same level that they could with the characters.

The artist is not only there for the performance aspect of the video, she is also the prominent character within the narrative, this again strengthens the sense of storytelling, however also makes her appeal to the audience as she is linking herself to the troubles within the narrative and instantly this creates her as relatable as she is going through what the ordinary person goes through. Swift is strengthening herself by making herself a familiar face within her video as well, by being in both the narrative and performance, often with just one or no-one else in the mise-en-scene with her, she becomes recognisable and relateable as the audience can connect with her because by allowing someone else to be the main female character would infringe on her connection with the audience.

Aswell as the audience being able to connect with the artist, there is also a sense of voyeurism especially within the narrative scenes; this is shown through the different shot types. The voyeurism also adds to the sense that the audience are Swift's confidantes, because they're listening and watching on her conversation. This could, potentially, alienate the audience from the artist because by being voyeurs they're not being involved, however I believe it has the opposite effect because the way in which the voyeuristic shots are shown creates the sense that Swift has set them up purposely for the audience to watch in on; almost saying: look, this is what I mean, this is how our relationship is.