Sound and Vision Hold the Keys to 'Time' for TBWA\MAL CD's Passion Project

Evan Schiller explains how to sell the one thing you can't buy at any price

In advertising, we’re trained to steal time. We grab 30 seconds of your attention to convince you something’s missing. We’ve mastered the tools of persuasion: copy that sparks curiosity, visuals that stop the scroll, music and sound that bypass the brain and go straight for the gut.

But tools are neutral. A hammer can build a fence or smash a window. For 20 years, I built fences. I actually like fences. But I wondered what would happen if I used those same tools to smash a window and let some air into the room. Not to take something from you, but to give something back. I’ve spent 20 years selling you things. Now I’d like to give you some time.

“Time” is a poem. A film. An ad for awakening. It asks us to slow down, in a world that only seems to speed up.

The concept for “Time” didn’t start with a brief. There was no kick-off call. No brainstorm. It started two stories off the ground, with the rungs of a ladder slipping away from my feet. There is a strange magic that happens during a fall. You’re the same, but the world changes. Time seems to stretch. Much later, I would discover that during high-stress events, the amygdala kicks into overdrive, recording memories with much higher detail than under normal circumstances, making a 2-second trip to the ground feel a bit like the Matrix.

I’d felt the opposite, too. When we’re in love, time doesn’t stretch—it condenses. They say “time flies when you’re having fun,” but maybe it’s much more than that. Maybe joy turns time into dust. And maybe all of this is the real theory of relativity?

We tend to experience Time as a straight line. But it’s not that. As I wrestled with the apparent elasticity of time, some words came through: “Time / it’s not a straight line / it all curves out in the ether / and though history repeats itself / time is not a circle either…”

Almost immediately, I imagined time as a single line. Stretching and collapsing, shaping our experience. A visual metaphor for the subjective experience of falling … and falling into love. In the film above, the line is a visual shorthand for how we measure the immeasurable.

When it came to making that film, I treated it like any other brief. I recorded the poem with longtime friend and music producer Devin Gati, who also composed the track. And I collaborated with animator and co-director Vincenzo Lodigiani to bring the line and concept to life. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the project ebbed and flowed, over the course of several years, to arrive where we are today.

This film is a vital piece of a much larger project and upcoming album, The Whole Inside, which we’re releasing under the moniker Ode. We describe it as a lucid dream disguised as a poetry album. And it lands on the terrestrial plane March 13.

The album is a high-concept existential reset. It tracks our cosmic journey from stardust to self-awareness. It attempts to prove that most of our evolution has been a process of trading infinite cosmic connection for the finite safety of our own mental walls.

But ultimately, it’s a rejection of apathy and a call to move beyond the constructs that define us. Time, included.

I’m still a fence builder. But with “Time,” I’m selling the one thing you can’t buy. The film is 4 minutes long, but if I’ve done my job, it won’t feel like it. And that’s kind of the whole point.