Concordia students dish on experiencing the year’s biggest concert film.
Taylor Swift has been inescapable for months now. Since kicking off in March, her wildly successful Eras Tour has been flooding social media feeds while heading towards becoming the highest-grossing tour of all time. Swift’s blockbuster brand recently saw another expansion as she quite literally put one out. On Oct.13, her concert film Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour hit theatres across the globe, serving as a rendezvous for all Swifties. The Concordian spoke with Concordia students who attended select screenings.
The film captures the first three of Swift’s six performances at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, which took place from Aug. 3-5. It is a near-exhaustive representation of an Eras Tour show from start to end, with a nearly three-hour runtime.
The magnitude of Swift’s career is not only showcased by her setlist and the many albums she navigates through but also the camerawork. Swift is filmed up-close and personal in crystal clear quality, but also from far and above, which illustrates the immensity of the stadiums and crowds she is playing for. The cameras also highlight the grandiosity of the stage design, the complex world-building done for each era and the intricacy of each detail that is included.
Yasmine Messaoudi, a first-year psychology student, praised the aerial and overhead shots due to their wide coverage of the visual effects that are projected in tandem with the stage. “It makes you realize how much it adds to the whole performance,” she said.
The in-theatre experience has also become a communal event for Swifties. Emma Megelas, one of The Concordian’s news editors, explains how fans lit up the theatre by treating it like a true musical event: “Everyone was dancing, cheering, it felt like we were at the concert.”
Journalism student Casey Kiss adds that fans also carried over the in-show tradition of trading friendship bracelets, further simulating a true Eras Tour environment from within movie theatres.
The movie experience essentially served as an alternative to attending the actual concert. Kiss was especially motivated to catch a viewing due to “How difficult and expensive it is to get tickets to the actual concert.” While some tend to view the Eras Tour movie as a spoiler of the actual show, both Kiss and Megelas noted that clips of the show are already all over TikTok and practically unavoidable. This sentiment was equally shared by communications student Maria Luisa Velez, who is set to attend one of Taylor Swift’s Toronto concerts next fall. She considers both experiences to be separate, with the movie being a good preparation for the concert and adding that it made her more excited. As put by Kiss, “Nothing can replicate the feeling of attending a stadium show like that.”
With shows lined up through next fall and the fresh release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version), Taylor Swift, her Eras Tour and their immense hype are clearly here to stay for the foreseeable future.
