Rodrigo Prieto isn’t exactly the type you call for an easy session, whether it’s an epic four-hour mob for Martin Scorsese, a post-September 11 meditation in New York for Spike Lee, or a triptych drama for Alejandro González Iñárritu. More recently, the renowned cinematographer faced a different challenge: taking his second top-secret music video for Taylor Swift during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Swift released her self-directed video “Cardigan” last Friday alongside Folklore, his improvised indie-rock quarantine work in the last three months. The 16-track record has dominated both physical sales and digital broadcasts, despite largely avoiding the traditional, lengthy release of the album that Swift has encoded during her time on the charts. When it comes to promotional singles, “Cardigan” hardly counts, as it premiered on YouTube simultaneously with the album’s release on streaming services; you could choose, as many did, listen to everyone Folklore before hitting play on the video.
But instead of feeling attached to the project, “Cardigan” acts as FolkloreThe Plain Language Thesis Statement, depicting Swift on a solo journey through magical forests, stormy seas, and candlelit huts evoking her own musical abilities. Like the album, it is dreamy and homemade and, in the right light, a little unsettling.
According to Prieto, all of that came from Swift on his first phone call. “She had the whole story: the idea of going to the piano and going out into the woods, into the water, back to the piano,” he says. Rolling Stone. Their latest collaboration, “The Man,” found Swift embracing a male alter ego to satirize gender inequality. However, from the beginning, Prieto says that “Cardigan” was always going to be more ambiguous and more personal: “When he called me and said this was more of a fantasy, I found it really attractive.”
This was in early July, when Prieto simultaneously served on a committee of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) to devise solutions to safely resume film production during the ongoing pandemic, all while the COVID cases continued. increasing in California. Prieto had just finished filming a public service announcement for a healthcare company when Swift asked him to work on “Cardigan,” and he was aware of the many, many layers of risk involved in the project.
“We needed to be safe, for their sake and for our sake as a team during filming, but also for the future of cinematography,” he says. “Because we want to continue working and doing what we do, and if, God forbid, someone got sick in one of the first jobs that was filmed, it would probably be closed [the industry]. “
Extensive filming safety protocols ranged from standard: everyone had to get tested and all crew members wore a mask down to extravagant: since Swift would need to go through a large part of the shoot without covering his face, the crew she used a system of colored bracelets to determine which team members could stay closest to her. (Prieto, assistant director Joe Osborne, and set designer Ethan Tobman used one color, lighting designers and gaffers used another, and so on.)
Prieto actually wore two face covers, a mask and an acrylic shield, for most of the day and a half of filming. And just to ensure crew members crossed within a six-foot range of Swift as little as possible, the full “Cardigan” video was filmed mounting the camera on a robotic arm, which was then controlled by a remote operator. The “techno arm,” as Prieto calls it, is generally only used in the industry for gunshots and other visuals.
“We were going to use the crane for the ocean scene,” Prieto explains, referring to the shot where the image zooms out in the wide expanse of water before focusing again on Swift. “So I said, we are going to have it both days.”
Prieto explains that connecting the camera to a giant robot was the surest way to get close-ups on Swift’s face. And while it may seem difficult to handle, you never know from watching the video that a human being wasn’t behind the lens at all times (in fact, given his success, Prieto is looking for smaller robotic arms that can be used in a car to upcoming projects.)
There was, of course, the tangle of additional secrecy: Filming had to be done indoors to avoid crowds, and Swift used an earpiece throughout the shoot to sync her lips to the song without any of the team members listening to it. The team built three sets on two stages across a large studio, and to create the illusion of natural light for the outdoor scenes, Prieto and her team covered large expanses of white fabric that bounced off the walls and ceiling. The process took longer than usual due to COVID, with the lighting team working in small groups and often taking breaks to remove the masks and catch their breath.
“Cinema is a gregarious effort by nature,” says Prieto. “People are close to each other, so it is very difficult to remember themselves.” Given the spacing on set, it was sometimes difficult for crew members to communicate about landmarks and documents – “we had to point to each other” – but Prieto attributes Swift’s clear vision for the project as a guiding light . Before filming, she sent him and Tobman numerous visual references for each scene: a mix of photographs for the dark ocean water and drawings for the fantastic forest sequence. One illustration, of a sword housed in a rock formation overlooking a stream, was particularly inspiring: “That became our central interest, we did not imitate it, but the feeling was what we were with.”
On top of that, Swift came up with a detailed shot list for the video ahead of time, with each visual accompanied by a time sequence within the song. “The ocean water, the fingers on the piano, whatever it was, he knew what he wanted for each section,” says Prieto. Unlike “The Man,” Swift couldn’t be as practical with his direction on set: he watched each shot through a video monitor after it was shot, but Prieto was impressed by his ability to “talk to the camera. “and use cinematic language without formal training, as with the unorthodox taking away and zooming in on the ocean. “I was impressed, because everything is metaphorical,” he says. “This video is not just pretty pictures of things; she tells a personal story through her lyrics, her music and now through the video. “
Even with “Cardigan” security innovations, film and television production during COVID will continue to have limitations for some time: Actors can’t interact with each other without masks, and Prieto doesn’t see any “normal” filming schedules resume. until there is a vaccine. But what were once considered standard practices and attitudes toward disease in the industry now seem reckless in the wake of the pandemic. In the end, that may be a good thing.
“It used to be that if you thought you had a cold, or even that you had the flu, you would go to work,” he says. “People came in with a pretty bad cough and kept working. I was getting sick, and during the shots they said to me: ‘If you have to go, you can go’, but I thought, how am I going to leave? If I go, the set stops. I would just continue. Hopefully there will be a little more health awareness in film. Hopefully that will be a good consequence of all this. “
