If you haven’t seen Taylor Swift’s new music video for “Out of the Woods”, you need to go watch it ASAP. In the video, we find one of our favourite pop stars running through everything from an ethereal woodland setting to a wintery wonderland. But Taylor had to do a lot more than whimsically frolic and lip-sync to give us this powerful video.
Joseph Kahn, the video’s director, confirms that Taylor did all of the stunts herself. So every time she was trudging through mud or shivering in the snow was real. There were no stunt doubles, no camera manipulation, no CGI-created snow—and if that doesn’t sound like a difficult feat, try lying in the snow in a sleeveless dress.
On New Years Day, the director shared a series of tweets that described the efforts Taylor went to in order to create video. He says that she really “suffered for her art.”
Taylor was so dedicated to making this video. I was wrapped in snow gear. She was in a dress. She suffered for her art. #OOTWMusicVideo
— Joseph Kahn (@JosephKahn) January 1, 2016
Taylor chose to stay in the mud for hours to keep the shoot moving. No in and out. Just gangstered it. She is bad ass. #OOTWMusicVideo
— Joseph Kahn (@JosephKahn) January 1, 2016
This isn’t the first time the director has spoken about Taylor’s involvement in her music videos. In an interview he did with BreatheHeavy a couple of months ago, he said “One of the things that’s really interesting about working with [Taylor] is that she’ll watch the edit with me as I shoot (because I edit as I shoot). She’ll see how I place an edit into the shot, and I can see her brain ticking, and seeing the pieces come together the same way I do… That’s very rare.”
Ugh. She’s just so incredible.