"I wanted to work on the coldness of feelings in a very visual way, playing with the snow, the distance and sadness. [Taylor] really liked it. The winter theme was very interesting to me -- the snow, the ice. I even wanted the guy to go swim in frozen lakes at some point. It was not possible, but I wanted to translate how you feel sometime when your heart is broken. The snow in the apartment is supposed to show how connected she is to him. He is outside, in the cold, but somehow she is connected to him."

-Photographer and music video director Yoann Lemoine, explaining the premise of Taylor Swift's lovely, moody clip for her new single "Back to December," which comes from her platinum-selling masterpiece Speak Now. The French auteur (who also directed Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" clip) explained to MTV News' Jocelyn Vena that the two stars weren't even in the same time zone, as Swift's sequences were filmed in Nashville while co-star Guntars Asmanis was shot in upstate New York.

The director invested quite a bit of time in getting Swift's look right for the tone of the video. "I have been going through a lot of videos and pictures of her on the Internet trying to find the best angle and style for her. I wanted people to feel like they would get to know her very intimately, and really trust in what she was saying," he explained. "I wanted her to perform a very natural way, to make her look very European. This was the main challenge to me. All of Taylor's world is very far away from my culture, but I saw something in her that could be very rough and heartbreaking; far from the princess glittery outfits and glam that she often goes for."