Swift spoke with filmmaker Martin McDonagh for a new installment in Variety's 'Directors on Directors' interview.
Taylor Swift is looking back at the creative process. The songstress turned filmmaker recently sat down with director Martin McDonagh for Variety's Directors on Directors interview, and she opened up about making her short film, "All Too Well."
The singer has previously explained how much the song the short film is based on means to her, and Swift said that she wouldn't have been able to direct the film had she done so when it was first released on her 2012 album, Red.
"Back then, I was just starting the process of writing music videos and just starting to use songs as a creative writing prompt, but I was not in a place where I was [ready]," Swift shared with McDonagh. "First of all, emotionally, I was going through exactly what the short film depicts."
According to Swift, she feels that "time is such an incredible asset to us when we have these stories that are hard to tell in the moment."
"It's good if a story is hard to tell, because that means it's incredibly emotionally potent," she explained. "But it's impossible to tell it with perspective and truth if you're in it. Sometimes that amount of intensity can be stifling."
For Swift, she has long agreed with fans who were calling for a music video for "All Too Well," because she too feels the song is "the most truthful account of heartbreak and loss and grief."
The songstress also said that the short film benefited from being created when she was an adult, because of the change in perspective.
"It was so exciting to go through it and being in my 30s looking back," Swift said. "Because I think there's a moment, when you're 19 or 20, when your heart is so susceptible to getting broken, getting shattered, and your sense of self goes out the window so quickly."
"It's such a formative age, I wanted to tell that story," she added, "about girlhood calcifying into bruised adulthood."
The short film stars Sadie Sink and Dylan O'Brien as a couple whose romantic relationship slowly falls apart over time, and proves to be unfixable.
The film accompanied the release of her rerecorded Red (Taylor's Version), which featured a 10-minute version of "All Too Well." It was one of numerous albums that Swift has dropped in the past two years as she creates music at a "rapid pace."
"I definitely feel more free to create now. And I’m making more albums at a more rapid pace than I ever did before, because I think the more art you create, hopefully the less pressure you put on yourself," she shared. "It’s just a phase I’m in right now. And everybody’s different. There are people who put an album out every five years and it’s brilliant and that’s the way they work. And I have full respect for that. But I’m happier when I’m making things more often."
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