
A lot more goes into creating music videos than one may think.  There are an overwhelming number of techniques that go into creating the perfect music video.  The director has a variety of camera angles, colors, shadows, gazes, etc. to choose from to portray the story correctly.  In Taylor Swift’s Blank Space music video, the director uses all of these techniques to tell the crazy love story of Taylor and her boyfriend.  Darker and lighter colors, paired with other techniques, are used to set the tone of Taylor and her boyfriend’s relationship.  They are also used to create the character’s personalities.  Using both dark and light colors to set the tones of scenes allows the director to show to the viewer that Taylor and her boyfriend’s relationship is very instable and gets worse over time.  They jump from dark to light scenes very quickly, implying that they are constantly up and down in the status of their relationship.  As the video progresses, the number of dark scenes outnumber the light scenes, showing that their relationship is deteriorating with time.

The first image (0:24) of Taylor Swift’s Blank Space music video uses dark colors and an extreme close up shot to create a very serious and powerful tone of Taylor’s character.  It is a shot from the very beginning of the video and is very important in setting up Taylor’s character’s personality.   This image is an extreme close up shot of Taylor.  By using the extreme close up shot, the director makes the image much more personal.  The viewer can see all of the details and emotion on Taylor’s face.  The background is even blurred and uses clear intensity, which makes the focus solely on Taylor.  Taylor is staring out with a straight face, which makes her come off as very serious.  Taylor is wearing dark red lipstick and dark makeup.  Red is an emotionally intense color that often is associated with power and danger, as well as love and desire.  The director uses the lipstick to give the viewer a hint that Taylor’s character is a powerful, yet dangerous woman.  In this scene, she is about to meet the man who becomes her boyfriend.  The lipstick could also be used to show the desire Taylor is feeling for the man she is meeting in the scene.  The dark red lipstick, paired along with the dark eye makeup gives the image a powerful tone.  Taylor is also wearing black clothing.  Black is associated with power;  people of high power often wear the color black, like black suits.  By having Taylor wear black the author is making her seem even more powerful.  All of these tones of intimacy, desire, power, and seriousness, show that the characters’ relationship is off to a strong start.  Two powerful, serious people in a relationship with desire.  But the red lipstick also gives off a sense of danger, maybe foreshadowing hard times for the couple in the future. 

The second image (0:49) shows Taylor and her boyfriend standing in front of a house on a stormy day with dogs.  The use of dark color, paired with the dogs and the almost bugs-view-like shot, in this image creates a mysterious and gloomy tone, almost hinting that something bad is about to happen in their relationship. Both Taylor and her boyfriend are wearing black in this scene.  While black can be associated with power, it can also be associated with mystery and danger.  It gives the image at tone of mystery and suspense that something bad may happen in their relationship.  This scene is important in showing that their relationship is starting to deteriorate and weaken as the video goes on.  Taylor and her boyfriend are not physically arguing yet, but a storm in their relationship is beginning to develop.  The shot is purposefully taken from a lower angle so that the gray, cloudy sky can be seen in the background. Gray clouds are signs that a storm is about to come.  This could be foreshadowing that a “storm” or big fight may be about to come in Taylor’s romantic relationship.  The dogs that Taylor’s boyfriend is holding onto are an important part of this scene as well.  The dogs are black and dark brown, which play into the dark color scheme the author is using.  The breed of the dogs is Doberman pinscher.  This breed has a stereotype of being very strong, fierce, and sometimes mean. They often are associated with fighting, which could be foreshadowing of what is to come in Taylor and her boyfriend’s crumbling relationship.

In the last image (1:06), the author uses lighter colors in the characters clothing and the background, as well as includes horses, to evoke a happier tone to Taylor and her boyfriend’s relationship.  Even though it is only for a short time, Taylor and her boyfriend do have periods where they are content within their relationship. Taylor and her boyfriend are both wearing white.  The color white has a positive connotation and is often associated with purity and goodness.  By making the characters seem like good, innocent people, it gives the scene a happier tone. The background is a light green color that is commonly associated with nature and safety.  By having the background green, the viewer can feel a sense of safety and security in Taylor and her boyfriend’s relationship in this scene.  Like the dogs in the last image, the horses play an important role in establishing the mood of the characters and tone of the scene.  Horses are a symbol of freedom because when riding horses people feel free.  More specifically, white horses symbolize the balance of wisdom and power.  By having Taylor and her boyfriend riding these horses, the director is creating the feeling that they do not feel like the relationship is holding them down yet; they still feel free and happy. Although they have feelings of happiness and freedom during this scene, their relationship is very unstable and quickly goes downhill.  There are moments of happiness in the beginning of the music video, but towards the end there are almost none.  Following this scene, are many other scenes of Taylor and her boyfriend fighting, not only verbally but physically as well.  

 At 3:08 the director shows the foreshadowing of a big argument to be true.  Taylor and her boyfriend begin a huge fight that seems to be both physically and verbally abusive.  This scene shows a painting of Taylor’s boyfriend with a cross written across his head and the word “no” under it.  The graffiti is the color red, which usually is associated with evil.  The devil is always imagined to be dressed in red.  The color is used to show how much anger Taylor feels towards him and represent the tension between them.  The scene is filled with intense shadowing, bringing a very gloomy tone to it.  Having the scene from a bug’s eye perspective almost makes the image appear even more dramatic and eery.  In the shot, you can clearly see the boyfriend’s confused look on his face.  He looks concerned and like he would never begin a relationship with Taylor again.  This is to show that their fight is not just some small disagreement but a serious, relationship-ending argument.  

The three screenshots taken from Taylor Swift’s Blank Space music video all show a use of color, paired with other features, to establish the tone of the character’s relationship and build character’s personalities.  In the first two images (0:24, 0:49), the director uses dark colors, like black and grey, to give the scenes their tone.  The first image pairs dark colors with an extreme close up shot to give the Taylor’s character a powerful and serious personality.  The second image pairs the black color of Taylor and her boyfriend’s clothes with the dark gray sky, to create a mysterious and gloomy tone to their relationship.  Contrarily, the image (1:06) uses light colors, like white and green, paired with the horses to give a happier tone and sense of stability in their relationship.   Although there are a few scenes like the last, the majority of the scenes incuded dark colors and therefore symbolized that Taylor and her boyfriend were in a bad place in their relationship.   Eventually, their relationship comes to a dramatic close.  At 3:08, Taylor’s “artwork” of painting a red cross and the word “no” over her boyfriend’s portrait is revealed.  This shows that their relationship is broken and unable to be fixed.  The images at the beginning of the video foreshadowed this storm that was brewing between the couple throughout the entire video.
