July 2013

There's been a cat and mouse game to every step of Justin Timberlake's 20/20 Experience, with elements either coming completely unannounced, or teased through various clues hidden throughout his web world. This new video for "Take Back The Night" is still just out-of-grasp, but you can check out an interactive map of NYC at takebacktn.justintimberlake.com, which brings you from J-Tim's [ed: Has J-Tim also lost the hyphen like his man Jay Z?] massive Yanee Stadium gigs and into behind-the-scenes of the video, with pop-up styled tidbits about shoot locations and more.

Wanna see the video? Tweet as directed and sit tight. 

It's a smart roll-out, both on a micro level — the twitter gambit virtually guarantees worldwide trending — but if you zoom out you see that Timberlake and his visual/marketing partners at The Uprising Creative — who handled the website(s), the promo clips and even the videos for "Tunnel Vision" and now "Take Back The Night" — have found a way to maintain mystery and heighten expectation in the know everything right now culture of the web.

With the original version now in the VEVO Certified zone of over 100 million views, there's no harm in losing views to the Director's Cut that's been newly unleashed.

This time director Diane "Diamond" Martel gets a big title credit upfront — which is more than deserved — and all the product placements have been wisely severed off like a pesky ankle monitor, but it's the other changes that should grab your interest, since A/B'ing the original and this Director's Cut can serve as a lesson in how you can cut two very different videos from the same footage.

This is sexier, more salacious and a bit sillier — for example, a Karaoke segment, which takes up a prominent position — and presents a great What If issue, where you can imagine if this cut would have generated the same response and results as the official version.