TAYLOR SWIFT HAD ‘IMPOSTER SYNDROME’ BEFORE DIRECTING ‘ALL TOO WELL’

• The event was primarily for her short film, All Too Well: The Short Film.
• Her real-life romance with Jake Gyllenhaal inspired it.
• she had been watching other filmmakers work on her videos for years and had begun to consider how she could do things differently.

Taylor Swift took the stage at a sold-out venue in New York City on Saturday (11 June) that was filled with her fans, but the main focus of the appearance wasn’t actually her music.

The showing, which was part of the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival, was of Swift’s short film All Too Well: The Short Film, which was also released on Spotify and Apple Music this weekend. Sadie Sink plays a wide-eyed young woman, and Dylan O’Brien plays her older partner in the film, which combines speech with the music that inspired it. Swift’s real-life romance with Jake Gyllenhaal over a dozen years ago is said to be the inspiration for the film.

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While All Too Well: The Short Film isn’t Taylor Swift first attempt into directing (she helmed a couple of her music videos, including ‘Willow’ and ‘Cardigan,’ for example), she explained during a Q&A session that working behind the camera is still new ground for her.

“It’s me stepping outside of what I usually do, which is writing songs and singing them,” she said.  “It is a kind of vulnerable moment where you’re trying something new and really hoping that you do everything perfectly, but it is important to remind yourself that you shouldn’t do everything perfectly, because you need to learn, you need to grow.”

Taylor swift claimed she had been watching other filmmakers work on her videos for years and had begun to consider how she could do things differently.

“Eventually I thought, ‘I really want to do this,’ and I think I had this imposter syndrome in my head saying, ‘No, you don’t do that, other people do that who went to school to do that.’”

Even before the audience was treated to a few surprises, the audience was cheering. Swift played an acoustic version of ‘All Too Well’ as the event’s climax, sung with all the empowering bile of someone who’s endured a devastating breakup and emerged a stronger person.

Silk and O’Brien, the film’s stars, also surfaced as unannounced participants for a portion of the Q&A and enthused about working with Swift.

O’Brien said, “She possesses innate qualities in a director that I feel usually are always tied to experience: trust, her ability to make a decision in the moment, her confidence, knowing what she wants, allowing her actors to construct a scene on their own.”

The conversation was led by Oscar-nominated director Mike Mills, whose short film based on The National’s ‘I Am Easy to Find’, Swift called “one of the most influential things I’ve watched.”

Amongst the fans in the audience was RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan and director Jim Jarmusch, who attended with his daughter. He was impressed by Swift.

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“I just think she’s capable of probably doing anything she puts her mind to,” he said.

Chances are, that will include, at some point, feature-length filmmaking.

“It would so fantastic to write and direct something, a feature,” Swift said.