Into the Library with Fredrik Bond

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I was obsessed with British commercials when I was a kid. I recorded them from the TV when I was on holiday and used my father’s editing equipment in the basement to make my own short films out of them. 

Right after school I went travelling around the world and ended up in a film program in NYC, doing mostly editing and being bossed around by the cocky director. I realised I should be in that position. When I came home after a couple years I got a dream job for Swedish television doing a supernatural TV series. It gave me the opportunity to do dark and twisted dramatic reconstructions mixed with interviews of people who had been kidnapped by aliens and who had poltergeist phenomenons in their homes. 

On a nickel and dime I directed these reconstruction segments with a cinematic vibe, which I realise now was the perfect film school for me. After that, I started to assist a Swedish director who eventually asked me to co-direct with him. I also keep the awesomely fun Danny Boyle memoir on my bedside table as a fun inspiration to read from time to time.

During all of this, I was more than obsessed with the work of Jonathan Glazer and Frank Budgen and stalked them until Frank let me start playing tennis with him. His friendship and support meant so much to me that I decided to always return calls to aspiring young directors who are looking for a piece of advice. Having somebody you admire as both a person and artist to talk to about life and work has always been great fuel for me. I also feel that I have so much to learn from them as well.

Today the goal is to always be busy, creative and keep making films. But more importantly to have a great community of friends (work and privately) and family around me. I deeply love the commercial projects and people I get to work with so I’ve never felt that I would ever abandon commercials as long as agencies and brands want me. Now and then, I always try to maximise the connection between the characters and the idea and to give each project as much humanity as possible. Therefore, I try to immerse myself into every project in different ways. For every project I like to figure out a way to go past just doing pretty visuals. Sometimes it’s by drawing doodles and sketches, sometimes by acting it out in little test shots on the iPhone and sometimes just from digging deep into writing the treatment. 

After assisting and doing some editing for other directors, I wrote a trilogy of shorts called ‘Milk, Death and Bananas’. Nothing was cheap during those days, so I spent every penny I earned and turned these into weird spec commercials, which to my surprise got published on the Shots bi-monthly subscription video tape, which then got the attention of creatives around the world. I was truly surprised how things changed so quickly from doing something that I put all of myself into. Thank you Shots!

It was the spec commercial called ‘Death’ which I turned into a spec commercial for Volvo. A couple were having sex in a station wagon while Death (inspired by ‘The Seventh Sea’) pushes the car towards a heavily trafficked highway, but they don’t care as they know they are engaging in safe sex. I went to the ad agency’s headquarters in Gothenburg to show it… But was told to never show it anywhere as sex and Volvo are not compatible. But I learnt that a load of creatives loved it and used it internally as a benchmark example on how to try to push their creativity. Some of those creatives started calling me with great little scripts. Sadly Volvo ignored me, which is a shame as it’s a great car to have safe sex in. 

We had a pretty straightforward project for a car brand where the car was gonna use the autopilot to effortlessly back up a driveway. The feature wasn’t fully developed yet so the car kept crashing into every wall. It was as if the car had a magnetic passion for the walls. The poor 80-year-old woman who sat behind the steering wheel got increasingly petrified and had to spend a month in rehab. The spot never aired and I believe the feature has been solved since then. It comes with the job to sometimes realise that we are part of the crash test dummy process. 

Every project has its set of challenges. I’m always grateful that anybody wants to give me a job, that I tend to not see the difficulties and try to turn them into opportunities instead, especially when it’s done and dusted and the actors have been bandaged up. For me it helps to have a memory like a goldfish and move on. 

I’m quite proud of many campaigns and the awesome creatives I’ve been working with for various reasons. However the series of Heineken films we did with Wieden + Kennedy was one of the special ones. Because the scripts were so good and everyone involved was great, deeply invested people and so hungry to do something unique for a brand which was floundering with its own voice at that time. It turned into a great campaign that ran for years which I’m very proud of. I’ve always loved the process of a new campaign as everyone is entering uncharted territory. 

One of my most emotional works was a film I did for Carling a few years back called ‘Space’. We had a client who was as hard as they come, and they challenged and doubted every creative choice myself and the agency came up with. It was tough to say the least. When I can, I try to have an editor on set and by the end of the last shoot day we sat the client down and showed him the cut… The guy broke down in tears - happy, joyful tears, which clearly showed that he himself was under a massive amount of pressure from the top. We all have things we deal with. From then on, with the following films in the campaign it was a much smoother sailing both for him and for us.

One of them is my Apple Dive commercial. It’s a very simple story about a guy who gets up and dives from the top platform empowered from the awesome sound of his iPhone. Too many projects try packing too many things in but this taught me that when you can lean heavily into a character or a story that is so simple and pure, you have an opportunity to work on every single detail and make them count. So in that particular project we focused very hard on making all the characters have a back story and a connection to the guy who walks past them. It was not just great faces, but there was a whole story behind each individual and what they felt as they connected with him. By far it was the most challenging casting process I’ve experienced, which ultimately paid off well with a Gold Lion in Cannes. The diver we eventually found in a small fishing village in Sicily after searching most corners of the world. 

Last year's Mercedes GLC launch film. I don’t think myself and everyone involved have ever laughed so hard as we did on this project. I normally get very worried about the final result of the film when there is too much laughing on set as the scenes then aren’t as funny, but this one broke that rule. 

It’s basically the story of a director (based on a very close friend of mine) with an Ingmar Bergman complex who is trying to make a car commercial. I’m actually quite pleased with the outcome. It all came down to a great client and agency who had a long trusting relationship with the agency. 

For me, Levi's 'First Time' was such a ball to make in terms of casting and trying to find subtext between the actors… It’s a super simple idea about these kids jumping from the Santa Monica pier. We spent casting session after casting session trying to find the ultimate chemistry between the kids and how they delivered the simple lines. It was that kind of job that was all about the casting. I can easily say that I went bananas down a rabbit hole of trying every single combination of the young girl and boy in the whole of California and the connecting states. If I had to choose one thing I truly love about my job it is exploring which actor is right for a part. A film as simple as this one becomes something completely different depending on the cast. For some reason we had lots of time and prep on our hands for this project… All spent on casting, so I believe the casting agent retired and lost the will to live. 

Christmas commercials are always a big pressure as its very competitive amongst all the ads being made. Everybody wants to do the best imaginable work. Last Christmas I loved working with Alto in NY and their Hospital client Montefiore. Brave and awesome creatives and a brave bold client. I’m always a bit uncomfortable to praise my own work but I’m happy with how it turned out and the way we managed to merge these two completely different worlds and storylines into one. It’s also one of those rare projects thanks to a great agency relationship with their client where we were given the opportunity to push it visually and emotionally in the direction we really wanted it. In order to make good work… It's all about that good idea, plus a good trusting three-way relationship between agency, client and production.