Fashion Special: Tn'T

New York-based directing duo Tarik Malak and Timothy Douglas, otherwise known as Tn’T, have splashed their irreverent attitude and high-tech, VFX-heavy style all over films for top fashion brands from Hermès to Juicy Couture. David Knight talks to these objective insiders about having fun following in the grand traditions of fashion photography

In Tarik Malak and Timothy Douglas’s film Muk Bang, supermodel Jessica Stam indulges in a stylised, blinged-up version of the South Korean phenomenon of muk bang (people webcasting or posting online videos of themselves eating large quantities of food in front of a camera and talking to the audience) while wearing dazzling haute couture. With razor-edited footage emblazoned with Snapchat-style icons and logos, this witty mash-up of internet culture, sticky food and high fashion became a fashion film editorial piece for Vogue Korea earlier this year.

Malak and Douglas – the New York-based directing duo otherwise known as Tn’T – specialise in this kind of irreverent, strikingly graphic approach to fashion. For example, in their film for MCM Worldwide, Into the Glitch, a model’s head is digitally manipulated to open up like an electronic chest of drawers, revealing the beautiful bags within. In Entropy for CR Fashion Book – their first director credit – they brought the ‘frozen moment’ technique to the fashion film. “The frozen scene technique had been done in feature films and mass marketing, but no one had done it in the fashion world,” confirms Malak. They refined it in their Models.com film The Interloper, a super-glossy film noir spoof, with supermodel Catherine McNeil as a Basic Instinct-style femme fatale.

The duo have helped introduce the type of VFX more commonly used in movies and commercials into fashion film. In doing so, they have raised the technical standard of fashion moving imagery up to the level of fashion photography. At the same time, Malak and Douglas have managed to retain a light, even comedic touch, a sense of fizz and fun, in their work.

Before making the move into directing, Malak and Douglas were creative directors at SWELL, the NYC film and post production company founded by Malak, though they were ‘ghost directing’ – that is, helping some famous fashion photographers make the transition to film directing.

They formed their partnership when Malak, previously in advertising and photo post production, sought a creative collaborator with technical as well as creative filmmaking skills. Douglas, an English/Irish freelance editor working in New York, answered the casting call. “Essentially Tim won,” says Malak. “We were soon talking about making a hybrid creative shop, and a step-by-step plan, leading to features, video games… entertainment in general.”

Entropy leads to activity

“Once we’d made Entropy, we thought that we should take more opportunities to direct things,” says Douglas, suggesting that they enjoy something of a special relationship with the fashion industry. “I wouldn’t say we were fashionistas. We’re not outsiders because we know the industry very well, but we’re more objective.” 

Indeed, they have gone on to make plenty of non-fashion-oriented films, covering sport with Nike and electronics with Samsung, as well as the documentary Three Corners, about boxers in New York. But they also keep returning to fashion, working directly with a number of brands, including Hermès, Mo&Co, Marc Jacobs and Juicy Couture, where they often originate concepts as well as execute them. They are now working more and more with agencies and “the products are getting bigger”, says Malak.

He senses the pair are following in a grand tradition. “When you really look at it, the formal quality of fashion imagery is usually superior to pretty much all of its counterparts, even art photography,” he says. “Like a Guy Bourdin picture – it’s better in formal quality than 95 per cent of work by fine art photographers.”

Deleting the background

Ironically, it’s their Muk Bang film for Vogue Korea and what Malak calls “the oxymoron of the super haute couture look and the crapness of the setting”, that is getting people excited right now and driving their commercial work.

Their objective is to do both advertising and narrative but achieving a balance between commercial and narrative work can be difficult in the world of fashion. “They never want too much narrative context in fashion advertising,” Douglas points out. “The more context you throw at it, the less appealing it is for them.”

For instance, in Oasis Couture, their film for Juicy Couture beachwear released last year, the story about an LA girl who goes to Palm Springs and decides not to leave eventually had its narrative elements stripped back. “They wanted the impression of a lifestyle rather than ‘This is the story of a girl who did this,’” says Douglas. 

Happily, they do have other projects that will fulfil their need for telling stories. “We want to do commercial work if it’s good commercial work – and also entertainment,” says Malak. “At the moment we’re working on longer formats.”

Douglas reveals the pair are working on something that seems as far from the world of fashion as possible. “We’re writing an incredibly visual horror film at the moment,” he says. Will it be as scary behind as in front of the camera? It seems not. “We’ve personally evolved. It seems the right time to engage these bigger projects now.”