The Work That Made Us: Trent & Marlena

Trent & Marlena are a dynamic directorial duo, recognised for their ability to craft visually stunning narratives layered with authentic emotion. 

Their work blends cinematic precision with heartfelt storytelling, striking a balance between universal truths and bold creativity. Together, they bring a collaborative and deeply human perspective to every project, creating stories that leave a lasting impact. As co-directors, their unique partnership allows them to approach every project with a shared vision and meticulous attention to detail.

Brooklyn-based but globally active, Trent and Marlena continue to push boundaries in storytelling while splitting their time between creative projects and gently correcting the pronunciation of their last name.

LBB> The ad/music video from our childhood that stays with us.

Trent & Marlena> We’re both products of ‘90s MTV and the era of unskippable commercials, so plenty of visuals still live rent free in our heads. Since there are two of us, it only feels right to share one of each. 

Trent> Starting with music videos, after 'Thriller'? It’s Metallica’s 'One'.

MTV was overflowing with wild, high-concept visuals back then, and as a kid, it was captivating. But One was stripped down—nothing crazy. It was a black-and-white head-banging jam session spliced with haunting footage from the anti-war movie 'Johnny Got His Gun'. It was unsettling. I’d watch it, feel something shift, and then watch it again. 

Marlena> When it comes to ads, the classic 'Who Shot Alexander Hamilton? Got Milk?' commercial still hits. The casting, the art direction, the camera angles—chef’s kiss. At the time, my young brain didn’t fully grasp what I was witnessing, but somehow, a 30-second spot about milk felt like a full-blown Greek tragedy. The tension. The stakes. The sheer existential horror of a mouth full of peanut butter and no way to fix it.

It had that signature ‘90s commercial energy—dramatic, a little unhinged, just the right amount of ridiculous. And as it turns out, it also gave me the crucial knowledge I needed to absolutely crush the bonus question on my history test. So, really, I owe it more than I’d like to admit.

LBB> The ad/music video/game/web platform that made us want to get into the industry…

Trent> It was never about a defining aha moment. It was about the form—the craft, the collaboration, the challenge of it.

There’s something exhilarating about creating emotion in such a condensed window of time. A feature film has over an hour or two to build toward a feeling. An ad has seconds. The real magic is finding a way to give someone chills, to move them, to make them feel something that quickly. That’s what drew me in. 

Marlena> It wasn’t just one ad. It was a whole world.

My friend’s dad was an art director—old-school, pencil-to-paper, Mad Men style. In their house, he had a drafting table, and the space around it just hummed with energy. Stacks of print layouts. Headlines pinned to the walls. Storyboards scattered everywhere. Sometimes, a rough sketch sat next to the finished piece, a before-and-after of an idea coming to life. It was the perfect mix of order and chaos—every corner radiated cool.

I’d go over to hang out, but I’d always end up at that table, completely absorbed.

LBB> The creative work that we keep revisiting…

Trent & Marlena> 'An Old Story' by Tracy K. Smith. It gets us every time.

We come back to it often. It’s printed on the back of 'Such Color', which sits on the mantel in our office, always within reach. One of us will pick it up, start reading aloud, and without fail, the other will pause—like we’re hearing it for the first time, even though we’ve heard it a hundred times before.

It’s simple but endlessly unfolding. And it’s just beautiful.

LBB> Our first professional project…

Trent> I was making short films when someone from Google’s marketing team reached out to see if I was interested in pitching on a project. I was interested, but I had no idea how the process worked. I called a friend in advertising, and they walked me through a thing called a treatment. 

I spent the week writing, obsessing, and tweaking before finally hitting send. The next day, they emailed back, “This all sounds great, but could you add some images and lay it out into a deck?” I had just sent them a PDF of a Word doc. No visuals. No layout. Just words. I had no idea a treatment was anything more than that.

Luckily, they gave me a couple of days to put something together. I scrambled, and in the end—somehow—I got the job.

Marlena> I started out as a copywriter, and the first project I got paid more than an intern’s salary to do was e-blasts for Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. Not exactly a dream gig, but there was something oddly satisfying about it—crafting subject lines about sizzling filet mignon, trying to make steak sound irresistible…as a vegetarian.

Most of it probably went straight to spam, lost forever in the void of unread promotions. But for the first time, I was writing something that wasn’t just for a portfolio or a class. It was out in the world. Maybe—just maybe—someone actually read it. Maybe they even changed their dinner plans because of me.

I’ll never know. But if anyone ever needs a steak pun, I’ve got plenty on the grill.

LBB> The piece of work that made us so angry that we vowed to never make anything like *that*…

Trent & Marlena> It’s not so much about a specific piece of work as it is the moment when the seams start to show. When you feel the effort instead of the emotion.

Maybe it’s an unmotivated camera move. A line that sounds written instead of spoken. A performance straining too hard to mean something. It’s when polish tilts into preciousness, when craft overshadows story, and you can see the hand of the person who made it peek through the curtain.

That’s enough to make you angry. Not the mistake itself but the awareness of it. Because the best work disappears—it just is.

LBB> The piece of work that still makes us jealous…

Trent & Marlena> Where do we even begin? The list is long. Very long.

We’re big fans of Frédéric Planchon. His work always feels honest first, clever second—never the other way around. His PSA for Mumsnet Elleemae is a perfect example. It’s raw. Emotional. It pulls you in without ever feeling manipulative. And just when you think it might break you, it finds a way to lift you up.

That’s the kind of work that makes us jealous. The kind that feels effortless, but only because every single choice is exactly right. The kind that makes you sit there, a little annoyed, thinking: Damn. That’s how it’s done.

LBB> The creative project that changed our career…

Trent & Marlena> For us as a team, it was 'Craftsman'. Before that, we’d always helped each other behind the scenes, but this was different—this was the first time we were fully collaborating, side by side, on set. And from day one, it just clicked. There was trust, there was pushback (the good kind), and there was this shared instinct to challenge each other in all the right ways. By the end of that shoot, we knew: This was it. This was how we wanted to work—always.

LBB> The work that we’re proudest of…

Trent> For me, it was a short film I made after my dad passed, 'Supersymmetry'.

It was terrifying because it was the kind of thing that felt almost too personal to share. But then it went out into the world, and the response was overwhelming. Strangers from across the globe reached out, sharing their own stories, telling me how it moved them, helped them in some way. That experience cracked something open. It gave me permission to lean into vulnerability, to stop filtering the most human parts of my work. It was a turning point. 

Marlena> We were working on a Disney project, and for the first time, I didn’t have Trent by my side. Scheduling meant we had to split up, filming different scenarios at the same time. I was convinced this was the moment I’d be exposed. Total imposter. Doesn’t belong here. Sweaty palms to prove it. But there was no time for doubt, no safety net—just me, the crew, and the work.

And I pulled through. Looking back, it wasn’t just about getting the job done—it was proving to myself that I could. That I belonged. That I was capable. And that’s why this project will always mean so much to me.

LBB> We were involved in this and it makes us cringe…

Trent & Marlena> This feels like one of those Hot Ones questions. You either answer it, or you take a bite of some atomic, soul-destroying hot wing and hope for the best. We’ll take the wing.

LBB> The recent project we were involved in that excited us the most…

Trent & Marlena> We just wrapped a 90-second documentary for the launch of a new Panasonic product, and it was one of those projects—the kind that reminds you why you do this in the first place.

For several days, we embedded ourselves with three families, filming their everyday lives like a fly on the wall. No scripts. No setups. Just real, unfiltered moments unfolding in front of us. It was immersive, emotional, and at times, wildly unpredictable—in the best way.

Their trust in us made it even more special. The client believed in the process, in keeping the crew small, in letting the story reveal itself instead of forcing it into a mold. There’s always a bit of risk in that—nothing is staged, so it could go sideways. But when it works, it feels really good.