This mini-doc for Proenza Schouler could have been a straight forward talking heads but you’ve lifted it to another level with effects and narrative telling. What was the original brief and how did you develop the treatment?

We were hired to make a short film about the designers behind the brand – the brief was fairly wide open. When it comes to documentary styles, ‘talking heads’ can often be boring – we decided to leave most of the interview footage out and alternatively illustrate the subject matter in different more interesting ways.

How did you win the job? Was it a pitch, friends or did you win it because of your previous fashion work?

A rep at the brand reached out directly having seen our previous work in music video.

Back story please – how did you meet and decide to work together as directors?

To clarify, there are two of us and we both happen to be named Harry. We grew up together in the same building in New York City and have always made short films together. The professional relationship just developed from there…

How does your working relationship operate? Do you have defined roles? How does your partnership work with the creative process? Do you both work on ideas and narratives together and who does what on the technical side? 

We’ve known each other our whole lives so our creative process is one that goes back and is pretty intertwined. Usually one of us will have an idea and the other will help develop it and serve as a bouncing board. We do take pride in conceptualizing videos from the ground up and have to this point edited everything we’ve ever done. It’s important for us to carry out an idea right through to the end.

Are there any differences of opinion?

Of course there are differences in opinion, but as one of the designers in our Proenza Schouler film mentions, those disagreements create a dialogue that leads to better ideas in the end.

Do you sketch out narratives or write scripts?

Yes we both write and do want to make something narrative one of these days.

Where do you draw your creative inspiration from?

That’s a hard question to answer, but we do look to a lot of conceptual art for inspiration. Most good ideas have already been done, so it’s a matter of synthesizing good ideas from different mediums to arrive at something new in film.

How would you describe your visual language?

We try and use simplicity as a tool – I would say most of our work so far has been focused on design, composition, and color palette – those elements are then carried out by way of a simple concept. We’re always looking to adapt and push our style in new directions, however.