Taylor Swift’s ‘Fortnight’ Music Video Brings in Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto

The Taylor Swift drops just keep coming.

At midnight, Swift released her 11th studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department” — and then announced two hours later that it’s a surprise double album, leaving casual fans and Swifites alike to spend the day decoding who the songs are about. (How many Friday afternoon Slack messages were devoted to parsing if a song was about Swift exes Joe Alwyn or Matty Healy?) And then came the album’s first music video for single “Fortnite,” co-written by and featuring Post Malone.

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In addition to “Dead Poets Society” (note that neither title uses an apostrophe) alums Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles, the music video boasts another big name: Oscar-nominated cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (“Killers of the Flower Moon”).

This isn’t the first time Prieto (no less than Martin Scorsese’s frequent cinematographer, who shot “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “Silence,” “The Irishman,” and “Flower Moon”) has collaborated with Swift. The cinematographer previously worked on the 2020 music videos for Swift’s songs “The Man,” “Cardigan,” and “Willow.” Here, the video is filmed in gorgeous black and white as Swift moves from a seeming mental institution — a recurring theme on the album — to an office to a round of electroshock therapy complete with a sparking crown.

Throughout the video (written and directed by Swift), she and Post Malone are in a tortured romance, surviving on fleeting looks and occasional tender touches as they struggle to find a way to fully connect. Prieto’s black-and-white cinematography is deep and lush, providing a setting for Swift’s lyrics (“I love you, it’s ruining my life”), which showcase the doomed romanticism of the album’s opening track.

With 31 tracks on “The Tortured Poets Department: Anthology,” we — and Swift — have only just begun to dig into the album’s possibilities, but critics have mostly been effusive in praise of Swift’s most adult and autobiographical album yet. And if nothing else, the video for “Fortnight” offers up yet another chance for those devoted to the Grammy winner to dig into Easter eggs (did you see the black dog in the frame, surely a reference to song “The Black Dog”?)

Watch the video below.

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