NEW YORK, 

Fans outside New York’s Beacon Theatre were cheering for Taylor Swift before she arrived, belting her songs before she stepped onstage.

That energy remained throughout her stop at the 21st Tribeca Festival on Saturday, where Swift discussed transitioning into the director’s chair, the nuances of visual storytelling and the possibility of future film projects with Mike Mills, writer and director of “C’mon, C’mon” and “20th Century Women,” before surprising fans with special guests and an acoustic performance.

It wasn’t Swift’s first time on a film festival stage — her Netflix documentary “Miss Americana” premiered at Sundance in 2020 — but it was her first time as a director. And as Swift and Mills compared and dissected their processes, it was clear that was an honor she didn’t take lightly.

“I always thought that it was something that other people did,” Swift said of directing. Being on sets and making music videos, “the lists of things I was absorbing became so long that eventually, I thought, I really want to do this.”

Her 13-minute film, “All Too Well: The Short Film,” was a product of that learning process. Released in November alongside her latest re-recorded album, “Red (Taylor’s Version),” the video put imagery and a fictionalized story to an extended version of “All Too Well,” a fan-favorite from her 2012 “Red” album. Since its release, the video has amassed over 67 million views on YouTube.