Matt Baillie on The Gatekeepers and Collaboration with AllSaints

“Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses, or one horse-sized duck?”

I still don’t know how I’d answer this question (I’m leaning toward 100 duck-sized horses, personally), but I’ve been thinking about it ever since I watched the first episode of The Gatekeepers on Matt Baillie’s Instagram! However, I can say that Matt Baillie is quite the trailblazer in the ever-evolving social media landscape.

He’s just released his latest five-series project, in collaboration with AllSaints exclusively on Instagram. In his new mini-series The Gatekeepers, filmmaker and digital creator Matt Baillie transforms social media into a stage for a sitcom-meets-mystery, where style is everything and secrets run deep. Partnering with AllSaints, Baillie wrote, directed, and produced the five-part story himself, portraying all five brothers at the center of a suspenseful hunt for a family traitor. Blending fashion, comedy, and cinematic storytelling, the series reimagines what branded content can be, and sets a new standard for how creators engage audiences online.

Amidst all this hype, Matt somehow managed to sit down and answer a few questions from us about his latest collaboration and ultimately, his thoughts on the art of storytelling in this current climate.

In a culture of instant gratification, why was it important for you to build a daily, unfolding mystery complete with narrative elements that you’d see in something like a Netflix series, like callbacks and even a final plot twist, rather than a single viral video?

I think truthfully, for the most part it’s the enjoyment factor; putting together a production like this and working out the intricacies, to then seeing a finished product is very gratifying in itself and we hope to take it much further! Also, I can’t tell you how funny it is, in essentially delivering scripted lines to a wall for a whole production, to then editing together a hopefully cohesive conversation in the end; it’s rewarding! And bizarre. I really can’t thank AllSaints enough for the trust they put in us to put this together honestly, it must have been a pretty odd pitch to get to grips with. 

It’s also that virality is not our end goal with what we’re doing here. And don’t get me wrong that would be lovely, but ultimately what we want to be known for is our ability to tell a story, make somebody laugh, produce a cinematic image, or at the very least put forward something that has its own online identity to some extent. A lot of work goes on behind the scenes of these very silly videos, and I think the community we have reached with them, appreciate that; I suppose there is a sort of duality to it in the sense that in some way we feel like we owe it to our audience to keep pushing production value/story telling etc… (they’re down for it, and so are we!). As well I think we owe it to ourselves to try and push our own limits, with the hopes that we can make something that has longevity! We genuinely love putting these skits together, and have big hopes for where we’d like to take them beyond the online platforms that we currently post our work. 

Many creator/brand partnerships can feel transactional (we give you this product, you tell everyone how good it is, etc.), but this collaboration has much more depth than that. What do you think makes AllSaints the right creative partner for you on this project?

I think creator/brand partnerships, present an exceptionally rare opportunity where you can pool resources and create something that is genuinely interesting, and potentially new and refreshing to an online audience. That’s why AllSaints were the perfect creative partner for this, as they very much share this ethos. Not only did they trust our vision of this collaboration, but they encouraged us to go beyond what we had originally planned to do. I hope that what we’ve managed to achieve with AllSaints on this project maybe speaks to what creator/brand partnerships can look like when you really do work collaboratively; open the floor to other creatives, have constructive conversations about creative direction, and more importantly have fun within the process. I hope that we work together again, and best believe we’ll be trying to raise the stakes to what we’ve tried to make here. 

Social media today is saturated with content, both polished and raw. How do you see your highly cinematic, tightly constructed style fitting into (or perhaps disrupting) that contemporary landscape?

Firstly, I’d like to deliver a crisp high-five to whoever wrote this question. Those are kind words you’ve used to describe us so thank you. And to some extent I feel I can’t speak to the contemporary landscape, only to the quite bizarre one that we have made for ourselves. Ultimately, we create what we’re creating because we find it very entertaining and hope that others do to. It also presents a space where we can practice our abilities, push our understandings of production, of cinematography, of narrative, and that’s just been a really enjoyable process! 

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Don’t miss the chance to experience Matt Baillie’s unique blend of humor, storytelling, and cinematic style! Check out The Gatekeepers series now on his Instagram. Also, check out his TikTok! Be sure to explore the rest of his work to see where creativity and collaboration can lead. And, oh yeah, Matt, I see your crisp high-five and I raise you my solid fist bump. Until next time!