Country Music Video

Country music is a genre of United States popular music that started in the Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its influence from the south-eastern genre of United States for example folk music, Blues music, and Western music. Country music often contains ballads and dance tunes with generally simple forms and harmonies accompanied by mostly string instruments such as banjos, electric and acoustic guitars, dobros and fiddles along with harmonies. The word country music increased popularity in the 1940s in favourite to the earlier term hillbilly music; it came to encompass Western music, which changed parallel to hillbilly music from similar roots, in the mid-20th century. The term country music is now used as a way to describe many styles and subgenres. The roots of country music are the folk music of mostly white, working-class Americans, who blended popular songs, Irish and Celtic fiddle tunes, traditional ballads, and cowboy songs, and various musical traditions from European immigrant communities.   

Conventions in Country Music
The conventions within a country genre music videos is that the majority of the songs have a soft and simple melody normally trying to put across a message across and portray there feeling though the lyrics. Country is best known for having a storyline flowing throughout the song lyrics, and therefore the music video follows a storyline to reinforce the song lyrics and make it clear to the audience on whats happening. Because the majority of country music videos have a storyline this means that they use a narrative style in their music video. The features to a country genre video is that the artist singing the song is usually the main character to the storyline, due to most of the country singers being known for writing there own song lyrics and material , as it only seems right for the artist to appear as the main character to show the lyrics are todo with them and how they feel about a situation, by also hving the artist within the video it helps the audience relate to them and gives off a connection. Its stereotypical for someone to think country music refers to artists wearing denim , cowboy boots and hats, therefore you expect the video to be set in a small town, in the desert and perhaps in a cabin style home. 




Taylor Swift - Love Story 

This music video is an example of a straight forward narrative, due to the video telling a story through both performing and a storyline. the overall song title links to the story being told through the song lyrics, which is being put across through a Romeo and Juliet themed narrative by telling the audience the story if the two characters journey of their romance for one another. 

Their is a variety of different camera angles used throughout this music video, ranging from two shot , close ups and birds eye view. by using a selection of different camera angles it gives the audience the illusion they are in the music vide, and viewing the story from different but natural angles as if they were watching it in person.

there are two main locations for this video, the first is a modern collage /high school and then there is a  flashback setting in a castle to reiterate the Romeo and Juliet storyline, where the women are dressed in expensive ball gowns and the men in heavy medieval looking armor and clothing. The overall sound through the whole music video has a change in music volume throughout, with it depending on the intensity and song lyric being performed at that time. which is overall done to signify the most important lyrical parts to the meaning of the song.  The general editing within has been incorporated into this video has used elegant cuts which aren't fast due to the songs beat not being a high tempo and there being no importance to have fast and short transitions. 

This extreme close up of Taylor swift has been used to make a connection between her and the audience, due to her eyes being eye level in the framing of the image and looking directing into the sense it makes an automatic connection and implies that the artist is talking directly at them, in a situation which perhaps the audience could also relate to. Not a lot of what she is wearing is visible within the camera framing, however the heavy black and brown colored eye makeup she wears is very elegant and bold, make up and undo curly hairstyles like this were stereotypical in that flash back century. From the classy up do we can identify that she's at a formal event and can quickly notice that is a shot set in the flashback because of the vintage filter which has been added when edited. This focus on taylor has framed her within the center of the image and blurred out the surrounding background making her the main focus of the scene. With her upholding a calmed friendly facial expression is gives the video an all round intimate feel, this could've been done to foreshadow her relationship with love.






The next country genre music video i will be analysising is