Taylor Swift’s New ‘Blank Space’ Music Video Comes with Its Own Interactive App
On Monday morning, Taylor Swift’s music video for “Blank Space,” from her new album 1989, was prematurely leaked and then reluctantly released on YouTube. Directed by 1990s video veteran Joseph Kahn, the striking video is a refreshingly self-aware take on her notorious man-eater image.
But it comes with something even more T-Swift: an interactive companion app for Android and iOS, packed with personal artifacts that her enthusiastic fans can discover and devour.
It’s yet another effort by the 24-year-old to leverage technology to reach her fans. Swift’s charming social media presence has helped her consistently engage with her followers across several familiar platforms and win loyal fans; now she will attempt to conquer the App Store, too.
The free app, an American Express-sponsored collaboration between Radical Media and Kahn, allows listeners to interact with the stately environment depicted in “Blank Space,” as Taylor and her beau run through each room.
It works like this: When you open the app’s interactive feature, you’ll be placed at the bottom of the grand staircase where Taylor meets her handsome suitor.
“You are literally a fly on the wall,” said Kahn, who had about three days to shoot both the video and the interactive content. “It’s not like you see the exact thing. Taylor and the actor had to go in there and re-enact scenes in the video over a good 30- to 40-second chunks of time and not make any mistakes. It’s literally like you’re watching a live stage performance, except you’re on the stage.”
The app itself uses your device’s accelerometer so you can hop on a swivel chair and spin around, iPad in hand, watching the ornate decor of Long Island’s Woolworth Mansion fly past you, just like Swift did as she was whisked away by her hunk in a suit.
As the song continues, she’ll go through almost the same exact conflicts she did in her music video. You have the choice to follow her through each room of the mansion or go and explore it on your own.
What you find when you stay behind and start tapping are more than 40 artifacts — never-before-shared Polaroids from her travels; pictures of her cat, Olivia Benson; or pictures of her singer grandmother, Marjorie Finlay — all hidden in props throughout the room. Swift worked directly with the studio to share these personal items. When you discover one, a blank square in your collection is illuminated, and you can save it to your camera roll.
The artifacts change as the mood of the song does, so when Taylor is happy, you can double-tap that painting of her lover and see it up close in all its eerie glory. Once the tide turns, however, revisiting the painting will reveal a mustache that seems to have been scribbled on in rage.
There is no “Find Taylor” button that will bring you to her and her paramour, but as you explore, ancillary characters emerge: an artist, a butler, a groundskeeper. Those characters interact with items in a room that lead to the extras baked into the experience. According to Radical Studios, there’s about 26 extra minutes of footage for her fans to stew in.
Kahn, who has produced countless well-known music videos — from Destiny’s Child’s “Say My Name” to Britney Spears’ “Toxic” — says this is the first interactive project he’s ever shot.
“Anytime you use a piece of technology or a new technique, that’s all well and good, but you’ve got to apply it in a human way,” he told Yahoo Tech. “Tell a human story. That’s the key. This is full of life.”
Though this is Kahn’s first foray into the interactive music video, the genre is not unexplored. Arcade Fire released an interactive video for its single, “The Suburbs,” in 2010, that asked for your childhood address, and then integrated photos of your neighborhood in the experience. Bjork’s 2011 album, “Biophilia,” was later released as an interactive app that encouraged you to play with designs and add your own string music to her tracks. (It was so highly praised that it ended up on display in the Museum of Modern Art).
But Swift’s project seems less aimed at stirring a feeling and more focused on encouraging active participation. To help find all the artifacts in the mansion, AmEx hopes fans will connect online using a preset hashtag, #AmexUnstaged. Though this seems like one of the last things a teen Swift maniac might tweet –– and American Express cards are probably not in the wallets of most teenagers –– it may very well happen if it leads to finding those digital “collectibles.”
Swift discussed her digital-based business strategy in a Wall Street Journal column earlier this year:
“I think forming a bond with fans in the future will come in the form of constantly providing them with the element of surprise,” she wrote. “I believe couples can stay in love for decades if they just continue to surprise each other, so why can’t this love affair exist between an artist and their fans?”
No, those surprises don’t come only in the form of guest musicians, Instagram clues, or videos featuring temptress temper tantrums. They also apparently come in the form of interactive experiences sponsored by AmEx, where 40 digital surprises await. Get hunting, Swifties.
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