Synopsis: Directorial duo Terri Timely (Ian Kibbey and Corey Creasey) discuss their absurdist short 'Synesthesia'.
Music videos and commercials have long been considered something of a minor league testing ground for film directors, and with the elevation of artists like Spike Jones, Michel Gondry and Joseph McGinty Nichol (aka McG) into the big leagues, the carrot dangles that much longer. More importantly, what's happened in the past decade is the evolution of advertising and music videos from marketing trinketry into storytelling mediums that are arguably more creatively engaging than anything else going.
Ian Kibbey and Corey Creasey seem to understand these things. Together they form directorial team Terri Timely, and not only do they make commercials, music vids and shorts, but they weave together live-action, animation, illustration and what they describe as 'good old- fashioned handmade grit' in ways as subtly unusual as their moniker.
"Ian and I started directing together five years ago and we thought it would be more memorable to have a single director's name rather than two," says Creasey. "Plus it was quite fashionable at the time to have a fake name. Ian had mentioned that a cool band name would be "Terribly Timely and the Fashionably Lates" but we thought it was a bit long so we settled on Terri Timely."
In addition to their commercial work for the likes of Amazon and MTV, they've put visuals to music for St. Vincent, Modest Mouse, The Wrens, Joanna Newsom, Air Traffic, Midlake, Bobby Birdman and The Little Ones. (Check out their music videos here on their website.)
They've also ventured into short films as a way of highlighting their talents, and well, just taking the piss out. Their most recent undertaking is 'Synesthesia,' an original concept about an obscure real-life condition in which "one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color.”
Kibbey explains: "I heard about synesthesia a while ago from a friend of mine who studies cognitive science. I mentioned it to Ian and we both thought it could provide an interesting framework for some visual ideas we had been kicking around for awhile. To us it’s not really important that the viewer have any prior knowledge of synesthesia, or that they make the connection between our film and the condition."
"Our main goal ... was to make something that was visually inventive, but also reflected our penchant for films that are structured with a sort of absurdist logic. We weren’t interested in making any sort of particular statement. Really, it was just an excuse to shoot fireworks indoors, have cats jump out of speakers, and explore our interest in Vietnamese retro-future art direction."
(continued on next page ...)
