Spotlight: fashion film directors, Nick and Adam Hayes

Today, in our spotlight series, let’s meet two film directors: Nick Hayes and Adam Hayes. The brothers are film directors hailing from the U.K. and based in New York. In their latest project, they collaborated with Alexander King Chen, a Taiwanese-American fashion designer and film producer. Together they shot three films in Taiwan, and won several awards at international film festivals. FTV reporter Stephany Yang caught up with the directors to find out about making fashion films and some behind-the-scenes stories of shooting in Taiwan.

This is a short film titled "Kill-Burn" directed by Nick and Adam Hayes. The film explores social media’s impact on mental health in a near-future society. The film was shot at Lin Family Mansion and Garden in New Taipei and Fengtian Temple in Taipei’s Songshan District. The story follows three protagonists, one of them played by Taiwan-based French actor Fabio Grangeon. The plot takes viewers on a journey of learning to love an imperfect reality, rather than perfect virtual-realities.

Adam Hayes
Director
For “Kill-Burn,” we thought about putting it into a virtual world, to make it more crazier of course, but when you put it in a virtual world and step out of that, only the real textures and the only the real things that matter will come to you. That’s what life’s all about.

Nick Hayes
Director
“Kill-Burn” was the second film we showed. That film had a lot of different locations where they were out in the open. We shot them at this time of the year so it’s the rainy season. Every time we tried to literally book a day, we would have to cancel because rain would come through and a typhoon would come through. It would destroy all of our plans. We very nearly didn’t film the final scene which is Fabio in the temple.  
 
In collaboration with Taiwanese American fashion designer and producer, Alexander King Chen, the directing duo created three fashion short films in Taipei. The film’s music and costumes were created by Chen, while the films were directed and filmed by the Hayes. “Kill-Burn” won a multitude of awards at film festivals in many countries, including the Los Angeles Film Festival, and the London Fashion Film Festival.

Adam Hayes
Director
A fashion film can’t happen without a visionary designer and filmmakers. Basically, it relies upon the fashion designer and it relies on the filmmakers, us. We come together. We inspire each other. Alex has his incredible ideas with clothes. He has ideas of themes. Then, we absorb those themes and those textures and those clothing designs. We generate a film narrative through our filmmaking.

The Hayes brothers are originally from London, and based in New York. They both have over 22 years of experience in the creative industry. Nick and Adam started to work together in 2007, directing and shooting music videos, commercials, multi-content campaigns, and narrative based films. The two have worked on fashion films for 15 years. They hope to create the world’s first fashion film feature movie.

Nick Hayes
Director
Fashion film is starting to become the most important medium in film.

Adam Hayes
Director
We’ve written a full feature, and right now, we are talking to a production company in Hollywood in bringing that to life. We want Alex and everyone to collaborate again and hopefully create the world’s first fashion film feature which would be amazing.

Alexander King Chen
Fashion filmmaker    
Can we film a bit of it in Taiwan?

Adam Hayes
Director
Yes, we can shoot half of it here. I think we can shoot 90% it here.

The Hayes brothers say they hope to continue creating films that spread awareness of important social issues.