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When award-winning cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto started working on the video for “Willow” with Taylor Swift in November, he didn’t know it was part of his surprise new album. Increasingly.
“I thought maybe it was a video from the previous album,” he says. Rolling Stone. “I didn’t even know what the song was in our first meeting.”
Prieto wasn’t the only one in the dark about the new album; Swift fell Increasingly last week with a release very similar to his previous LP Folklore, complete with a self-directed music video released at midnight alongside the album: “Willow.” The video serves as a narrative continuation of the story in the “Cardigan” music video, which Prieto also worked on, which features a ton of visual references to tracks from Folklore.
“Willow” begins in the same cabin where the video for “Cardigan” ended, and Swift is once again called upon to enter her magical piano that travels through time and space. She follows a golden rope (referring to the Folklore song “Invisible String”) and comes to an autumn forest glade under a willow tree, where he sees the reflection of a man (played by his tour dancer Taeok Lee) and a woman in a moonlit pool. Later, the rope takes her to a scene from her childhood, a carnival party in which she performs inside a glass box, and a winter session in the middle of the forest. Eventually, the rope leads her back to the cabin where she reunites with Lee.
As with the “Cardigan” video, Swift, Prieto and the production team not only had to keep filming a secret, but also found innovative ways to film the project under Covid-19 security protocols without compromising the life of the team. Prieto spoke with Rolling Stone about the production this time, and how the team brought Swift’s witchy vision of “Willow” to life.
How is filming “Willow” different from “Cardigan”? It looks like you guys were able to have other actors on set this time, but how did that change the security measures you had to follow?
He was still very, very strict. A big part was all the test protocols, which we also did last time. But when we were making this video, we knew more [about the virus]and the security guidelines were more specific. We follow the same ones that the DGA has done, that my Local 600 union, SAG, has done: everyone has implemented these protocols that we do follow, and they were very careful about it.
For example, in the scene with the choreography around the tree and the clearing, you know, with a kind of dance around these magical orbs, there was a limit to the number of actors and dancers we could have there. That was created by visual effects, actually they added more dancers. I think the actual number was 10 dancers when we were filming, and they all have masks, actually. We can’t see their faces, and that’s partly because they have masks.
In reality, there is only one moment, in the cockpit, when you are in close contact with [another actor], with the man she’s been missing in all these different moments. But of course they were both tested, and the masks would only be removed at the time we were actually filming. Everyone else would always wear masks. And just like last time, anyone who was in the vicinity of the scene had to have a red bracelet; everything was color-coded, in terms of who could be near the scene and the actors. And certainly, it was very important to have not just a mask, but a face shield every time we were around Taylor or any of the other actors or dancers.
I was still using the remote camera on a crane, so there wasn’t even a camera operator near anyone. We followed all the guidelines very closely, but now we feel more relaxed in the sense that we have more information. We could follow all these protocols. And we knew we would be safe because everything was pretty strict.
You mentioned last time that communication can sometimes be difficult on the set of “Cardigan” because everyone had to yell at each other or point to things since they couldn’t get too close. Could Taylor be more practical in his direction this time, as he was while filming the music video for “The Man”?
That was still the case, especially when you have a mask and a face shield, and you’re six feet away, you have to be a bit louder to be heard. So we kept that protocol. But she was still very involved. I would stay on my monitor at the DIT [digital imaging technician] station, because it was the best picture, but everyone would be watching it from a distance, two meters away.
But there was a moment that was unforgettable. And she has actually mentioned it, which was, just as we started filming on November 7, we got the news of the election result. We were both looking at the monitor at the VIP station, and she got a text alert or something. Obviously at the time, we were all working on the video, but in the back of our minds we’re all like, OK, what will happen? And she was the only one who could look at her phone, because in fact, everyone had to give up their phones at first so that no one would take pictures of anything except some people like me who could sometimes use our phone. take a picture for reference. And I was only using it very, very sporadically for that kind of thing.
So Taylor ended up being the messenger of the election results on set.
Exactly. So, she was next to me, six feet away, but she was next to me. And she got this message and showed it to me. So I found out about the outcome of her at that time, and what I said to her was, “I will never forget this moment,” both because it is a historically important moment and because she was the one who showed me this information. That was very special. Yes. I wanted to celebrate and do a little dance but I didn’t, we are professionals and we are working and also, I wanted to be respectful to anyone who would have voted differently. But it was an incredible moment, and just the beginning of a three-day shoot that turned out to be an adventure.
This video makes so many references to songs in Folklore and older songs from Taylor’s discography, both obvious and hidden. How did he present his vision to you?
The first meeting was talking about the history and ideas. I still didn’t know the song, but the first thing I did was realize that it is a continuation of the previous one that we did together. At the time, he was still developing his ideas and trying to figure out exactly what was going to happen; for example, the ending was still not entirely clear. I knew that I wanted to end up back in the cabin and that [the man] would be there, right? But during that meeting, we decided to have both of them leave the cabin. That was an idea we came up with as we talked as a team.
And then we went from one place to another; at first he thought it should be night because it had always been night, and then he changed his mind and said it should be day, so we thought: Well, how does it look out there? Is it just limbo? And then Ethan Tobin, our production designer, said it should be some kind of fall forest. She was very grateful for that and really listened to everyone’s ideas.
There was also talk about that moment in the clearing, about whether it should be a bonfire or not. First of all, with production, we would have had to shoot it outdoors and that would have been very difficult. But he also felt that even with special effects, it wasn’t good to show all the wildfires that were happening in California. Then he came up with the concept of some kind of orbs, something more magical, and Ethan Tobin came up with a bunch of different reference photos for that. That was the way we developed these concepts, even with the willow, Ethan sent in some pictures and ideas, and one of them had these magenta leaves on the ground, which was weird and magical. Taylor and I love that. It was that kind of back and forth in the pre-production phase, even before we even heard the music.
It’s amazing how he was able to achieve this in such difficult circumstances, communicating back and forth via Zoom, and then with actual video recording.
It’s quite difficult to get such a complicated and technically challenging shoot off the ground, but we planned everything in advance. Ethan Tobin was working with his art director Simon Morgan on the set design for Zoom. So they were all wide shots, and then you have to go to set and plot it. For that cleaning scene, for example, Simon Morgan and I, and my teacher Manny Tapia and my key grabber Donald Reynolds, we went to the soundstage first and recorded the space in the center where the magic orbs would be. And then we measure the distance to the background with the blue screen, and we record where all the trees would be, and then we find out where all the lighting would be for there and the carnival stage; Everything had to be very, very precise and you had to figure out the distance. It really helped when we were filming, because it went so well. So, this is how we did it.
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