Like all the best directors, Tom Kingsley ain’t just a shit-hot filmmaker, he’s also thoroughly interesting to boot. Whereas you (possibly) or I (definitely) might have spent our student days doing, well, not an awful lot, Tom was busying himslef directing shows for renowned university comedy troupe Cambridge Footlights. These days, he’s cosied up at production company Colonel Blimp where he’s making a name for himself with some ingeniously entertaining music videos and shorts. He’s also currently working with some of his fellow Footlights alumni on his very first feature film.
While pitching on ‘Up in the Clouds’, I was reading ‘The Art of Travel’ by Alain de Bottom, and the cover is literally a picture of clouds from out of a plane window. So that was the first bit of inspiration – and also why I gave the book a cameo in the video. Then I thought about all the things on planes that the video could explore, and realised that the only things that weren’t cliches were the inflight video maps – which are so boring that only a fool would make a music video about them.
Darwin and I developed the story together – he came up with the air traffic control idea, and vetoes plans to make him fly like Superman. Finally, I read a lot about clouds, watched a lot of airplane video maps (there are lots on YouTube for some reason), and came up with a big list of visual gags to include.
I noticed the many literary references in your promos (Darwin Deez and the I’m Alive promo in particular) – and so when I found out you have an English Lit degree it really made sense! Are you still a big reader? Do you think this literary background influences or informs your filmmaking in any way?
I do still read a lot – but the books are trashier than the ones I read on my course. I think reading is a really good way to get inspiration that’s more personal and unique than what you might absorb from films or photos. It’s your imagination that makes the books come to life, so you’re not in danger of copying someone’s visual style by accident. All the videos I’ve done have had a narrative – so I suppose I’m most interested in stories and ideas.
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, by Italo Calvino.
And favourite film?
Brazil, by Terry Gilliam.
How have your experiences directing the Cambridge Footlights informed your work diercting music videos and short films?
The Cambridge Footlights is amazing -lots of other students working really hard to stage an hour of new comedy sketches each fortnight. So you’re constantly writing and rehearsing. It’s very different to film, but it taught me what’s funny, and how to make stuff under pressure. I made video trailers for the plays I directed with Footlights, and in one of them I came with a low-fi Mission Impossible face-ripping technique that I reused for my video for Mujeres.
I still make stuff with my friends from Footlights – in fact for the last few months my friend Will Sharpe and I have been making a big proper feature film with them. We’re editing it now, and it’s pretty damn good. I can’t say much about it except it stars someone famous and it’s not in 3D.
That I didn’t like them. Well, I did, but it was frustrating doing a job that’s just about telling a story or just using pictures. I like directing because you can do both. But they were useful in that they made me much better at writing and drawing quickly – so I’m pretty efficient at writing treatments or drawing storyboards.
What inspires you?
Any video by Keith Schofield.
Outside of filmmaking, what excites you?
Theme parks.
The first animation I made – because I sent it in to Blink and got some work experience, and then a running job, an then a directing job out of it. Pretty good going. It’s a 4 minute stop-motion epic called ‘Rip’, where some scissors make a figure out of paper, and then **SPOILER** kill him. It’s very sad. I made it in the evenings when my day job was working at a newspaper.
Where do you see yourself in ten years time?
Well I’m finishing off my first feature film now, so hopefully I’ll be making more films. But whatever happens, I always want to do music videos. They’re so much fun, and also now seem relatively straightforward in comparison to a film. I also expect to have a retrospective at the Guggenheim, and be king of the moon.
To find out more about Tom visit his website www.tomkingsley.com or head over to Colonelblimp.com.
