Taylor Swift’s song “Love Story” is about exactly what the title implies, and so is the video. The video is reenacting this fairytale story that Taylor Swift is singing about. The beginning scene is an ordinary scene; it is based at either a college or high school area. Once she begins singing, it transitions to another time, a time that exists in fairy tales. The elegant dress she is wearing and balcony at which she is standing helps contribute to her story she is singing about. The dresses she wears throughout the music video really add to it, also.
The lighting dims often throughout the video; it creates a more “relaxed” tone. It goes from being light to dim, accentuating different aspects of the video. When it shows her singing alone on the balcony, the sun is shining, and it is bright; however, whenever Taylor Swift is with her “prince,” the light is a little dimmer. When she is in the garden outside, it appears to be night time, and it is so dark that she needs a lantern to find her love.
It is good that parts of the video go along with the story that she is telling. After she sings, “So I sneak out to the garden to see you…” it shows trees and such, which must be the “garden” she speaks of. It is dark, and she has a lantern, which adds to the fact that she is sneaking around trying to see her “prince.”
The change of scenes is effective. Instead of just showing the story that Taylor Swift is singing of, they also show her singing the song. When she is singing the song, she is shown in the same old-fashioned dress, which keeps the audience in “dream” mode.
Observation
Taylor Swift is a country-music singer who recently graduated from high school. She is nineteen years old with her twentieth birthday approaching. For girls her age,
they dream about prince charming sweeping them off of their feet. With Disney Movies and others showing just that, what else are they supposed to think?
She begins the video walking through grass, admiring a boy sitting against a tree. After looking at him for a short while, she drifts off into a picture-perfect daydream. In her head, she goes to a moment where she is dressed in a beautiful dress, looking out from a balcony. She begins recollecting about the love story as if it had happened years ago. As time drifts back to a place where women dance in Elizabethan dresses and men dress in old-fashioned suits back before the time of technology. They dance with their hands joined in the middle, twirling and stepping to the beat of the song.
Pathos is filled throughout the song “Love Story” and its video. That feeling of love is present. Every girl dreams of being swept off of her feet by the cute guy in the video. They all want that feeling of love, that magical feeling that is present in the video. The emotion through love is heavily represented by this video and the characters in it.
