Take Back The Night

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Justin Timberlake "Take Back The Night" (Jeff Nicholas, Jonathan Craven, Darren Craig for The Uprising Creative, dir.)

And after a clever engagement campaign, Justin Timberlake unveils the "Take Back The Night" video. It's a celebratory clip that takes the pop star through the NYC night — a deserved victory lap for anyone who can can pack Yankee Stadium twice — leading from Uptown Baby to the electric streets of Chinatown. The overall vibe is somewhere between the opening montage for SNL, the Copacabana tracking shot from Goodfellas (that every director seems to want to recreate) and the mid-period Michael Jackson video of your choice.

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The Virtual NYC Hunt for Justin Timberlake "Take Back The Night" Begins

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.