How Ian Pons Jewell made Hornbach's timber limber

After last year's barnstorming (and shots Awards winning) operatic bathroom fix-up No Project Without Drama, it's hard to imagine how Hornbach and agency HeimatTBWA/ would get much more cinematic.

The answer, it seems, is Ian Pons Jewell, whose splinter-teasing Just A Board spot imagines the multitude of ways a strip of wood could be harnessesd, manipulated, and even consumed.

We sat down with Pons Jewell, alongside composer Thomas Houthave, whose audio company Klankwerk created a cracker of a soundscape, to find out how they (pardon the pun) nailed it.

Ian Pons Jewell, director, ANORAK Film and Prod Co

When did you get involved with the project, and what drew you in?

My second-ever commercial was for Hornbach, via Anorak, back in 2017 [Your Project Only Belongs To You]. It was a truly pivotal moment for me, as the creative was so phenomenal and I was able to really push and get deep into the world we created. Anyone who has had the pleasure of doing a Hornbach spot will know what I mean. So when I got asked to pitch again, I didn’t even need to see the creative. It’s always excellent.

Once reading it, of course, that pulled me in even further. Guido Heffels [CCO] always seems to find the soul each time. Though there may be various paths, or even disparate ideas, in the initial deck he makes, there is always a solid kernel that everything grows from. A film about the limitless potential of a discarded piece of wood, with a character arc going from disillusionment to inspiration.

As a director, you always seem to be trying to find new and innovative ways to explore the medium. Did the topic of this film resonate because of that?

I think those methods should always try to be about the creative itself, which in this one was, of course, all about the board. How to shoot it, personify it, connect it throughout the scenes from the very first moment you see it. It had to be that particular board, all the lives it could have, if only this forlorn passerby would shift his perspective.

I’m definitely more drawn to stuff I can shoot in a more raw, honest way, while still finding new things here and there.

I also don’t shoot the way I did “back in the day”, but those techniques suited those scripts. Now I’m definitely more drawn to stuff I can shoot in a more raw, honest way, while still finding new things here and there. Though I don’t think there’s anything particularly innovative in this commercial from a craft standpoint.

Hornbach is renowned for its inventive (and award-winning) commercials. Was it daunting at all to take this on?

You don’t want to be the director that made a shitty Hornbach, for sure. At the same time, I think it would be hard to do that with the strength of the creative from the start.

Everything can be daunting with filmmaking, though. I was a bit more nervous about having pushed to shoot in Georgia. Though everyone was very happy about it, it wasn’t on the initial list of places in the minds of the client or agency. I think that was the more daunting aspect. Most had never been, certainly never shot there. So I had this feeling of responsibility toward not just the shoot, but also everyone’s experience, more akin to that of a host than a director.

But it turned out to be absolutely magical, as Georgia always is!

What was the first thing you had to nail (pun intended) to get this tale of wood on screen?

The board itself! Giorgi [Karalashvili, Production Designer] and his incredible team at Slow Pulse gathered different pieces of wood from various places and we did a literal audition of them. They were all lined up and we walked around, looking at them from different angles, getting a feel for them.

We actually picked a different one with Guido before the client arrived. Then, once we showed the client, we had them all out again and another piece of wood just started to stick out more, it felt like “the one”. So we switched at the last minute.

It was Dasera’s favourite piece of wood, one of Giorgi’s amazing art department team members. 

He had plans for it, which were foiled, but at least it will now live on screen.

Were all of the script iterations there from the start, or were you involved in bringing some of them out?

The core creative was there from the start, but there were a few really good paths that Guido had laid out. I love the way he writes, it’s so strong in intention, but never closed off. Each of the ideas in the first brief would have been excellent, but they were all shown, all open.

I gravitated toward one particular image which Guido had roughly composited himself, of a board lying against a wall and the shoulder of a man seen in the frame walking past looking at it. The man just dismissed the board, not caring for it. That image struck me.

Everything then spiralled from this and I had a clear image of the character, his feelings, his life, his backstory, and what the board represents to him. So I put together the broad idea of a man coming back from a hard day of work, going past this discarded board, which somehow triggers him.

I thought I would never be able to do another montage/vignette ad ever again.

I thought he could have previously been a woodworker or general DIY enthusiast, but through his day job this love slowly fizzled out. The board was then causing him to confront this lost life, this past love for his craft.

I then added ideas for the copy, things like “a stupid, useless board…” to really have it speak to him, but it also mirrors his own internal thoughts.

This could all sound a bit much, “it’s just an ad” after all… isn’t it?

The film is essentially a glorious montage rather than a straightforward narrative. Does that change how you approach directing?

I thought I would never be able to do another montage/vignette ad ever again, after all the ones I have done and the limitations that you usually have with them. I feel like a brief visitor to these places and people and can’t get stuck into them as much as if it was focused on one space.

But it was essential for this film as the board is the main character, which goes on this journey. The board is within every single moment, so it isn’t really a vignette scene in the usual sense, where you cut to different people and places. It is the life of this one piece of wood.

In terms of directing approach, it is just focused on the type of montage piece being done. I think each one is different. This had the focus on the wood being the source for each scene.

You really get the camera into some interesting places, up close to a tooth being picked, behind the strings of a guitar. Are those ideas there from the storyboarding stage, or is there improvisation on the shoot?

Maybe half and half, I would say. I improvise much more these days compared to before, when I would want everything really buttoned up in the storyboard stage.

There were always discoveries, but it had quite heavy design in the boards. I try to keep things much more open now.

We wouldn’t consider a spot to be true Pons Jewell canon without a sprinkling of surreality. Were there versions that leaned more into that?

The dream section wasn’t part of the initial brief, so that was something I added, but it felt totally right to the creative. 

It was just the result of pulling at the string.

The combination of the edit and the VO gives the film an assured, thoughtful, stoic quality. Did you play with the pacing at all?

It was an interesting exercise as it had a lot of similarities to the previous Hornbach. Both had VO as the key element from which everything held on.

The first edit I did wasn’t immediately working around the VO, we just cut what we felt was best and added the VO, which sort of worked over it. Guido didn’t feel it was right, so he went off and re-recorded the VO himself.

I improvise much more these days compared to before, when I would want everything really buttoned up in the storyboard stage.

He did this very broken-up, staccato style of VO, totally breaking what we had. Then we re-cut to this, totally changing the entire feeling of the spot.

On this one, I had a very clear idea of the VO, the feeling, the pace, it was something very important in communicating the emotion and creating the right rhythm. So I recorded the VO myself, initially as the scratch. We cut to this, I adjusted it slightly but not much.

In the end, everyone wanted to just use my voice so I recorded it properly!

So the final piece is quite similar to the scratch first edit in terms of feeling. The edit was by the brilliant Yorgos Lamprinos, and his first cut was already excellent

Thomas Houthave, co-founder, Klankwerk

What drew you to this project? How did it differ from others you've worked on?

Working with Ian Pons Jewell was a big part of it. His work sits in an interesting space between advertising and cinema, and this script had that same ambition.

I’ve been a fan of his work for a long time. I’d worked on projects where he was involved before, but never directly on one of his films, so that made it particularly exciting.

What made this one stand out is that it revolves around something very simple: a piece of wood, treated in a very cinematic way. That immediately pushes you towards restraint.

You’re not building spectacle, you’re shaping perception.

Talk us through the process of creating the soundscape? What was the first element to get right?

We got involved quite early, while the offline was still being built, so sound was evolving in parallel with the edit. That allowed us to explore tone from the start rather than applying it afterwards.

Initially, the direction leaned slightly too far into a darker, almost “scary woods” territory, both in sound design and music. I flew to Berlin to sit down with Ian Pons Jewell and realign on what the film needed to be. That conversation was key.

It revolves around something very simple: a piece of wood, treated in a very cinematic way.

From there, the focus shifted towards giving the wood a presence. Not stylised, but physical and intentional. The rest of the soundscape and score then follow the film’s shift in perspective, gradually opening up without overstating it.

As he mentioned, Ian actually performs the English voiceover himself, which adds another layer of authorship to the film and ties everything together in a very natural way.

How much back and forth was there on the project? What were the trickiest elements to nail?

There was quite a lot of back and forth, but in a constructive way. It was a very open process.

Music went through several iterations. It was dropped, brought back, and at one point went into a full pitch again against other composers and a large music agency. That’s part of working at this level.

The most challenging aspect was tone, particularly in the dream sequence. It required a precise balance between abstraction and clarity. Push too far and it becomes overly stylised, hold back too much and it loses its impact.