The Way I See It: Fredrik Bond

When I was a kid, I was magnetised by the editing equipment that my dad had in our basement. Every day after school I pirate-copied VHS rental movies. I grew one of the fattest libraries of pirated movies in Stockholm.

I loved sitting and looking over my dad’s shoulder when he was working on the equipment. I remember him saying, “Lean forward, look at those eyes, they're glowing. They're just penetrating the lens.” So, when I started directing myself, I kept my dad’s words in the back of my head.

I was an early teen when my family and I went to England on vacation and I saw the skinhead commercial for The Guardian [Points of View] on TV. It was dark, clever and enlightening. In Sweden in 1986, we didn’t have commercials on TV, so this was like a totally new thing for me. I recorded a bunch of incredible British commercials off the TV and brought them back with me.

Every day after school I pirate-copied VHS rental movies.

For some reason, my dad had some of Joe Sedelmaier’s and Roy Andersson’s dark and twisted commercials on VHS tapes. I put them into the VHS editing system and started re-editing them together with the British commercials I had recorded and mixed it with scenes from my favourite movie, The Shining, and other movies. They didn't make any sense whatsoever.

I went backpacking around the world straight after high school. In Sydney, I bought a pass to the Sydney Film Festival as I had never been to one before. I spent two weeks watching every single movie they were screening and was literally floored, stumbling out of Russell Crowe’s Romper Stomper... His eyes were not glowing. They were on fire and it sort of lit my soul to try to get into the film business.

Above: The Guardian’s Points of View commercial, an early inspiration for Bond after he saw it on British television as a teenager.

I went to New York to find a film school but realised it was too expensive, so I took some courses at NYU and crashed on people's sofas as I couldn’t afford the tuition or the rent.

Inspired by The Shining and some of the darkest commercials I’d seen in the UK, I wrote some weird and dark spec commercials about death and masochism which ended up in the new director section on the shots VHS tape that came with the bi-monthly magazine.

I was obsessed with Frank Budgen's wonderfully dark humour.

Early on, I was terrified that any of my work would come across as sweet or cheesy, so I think my spec spots became a little too dark and twisted for the real ad world at that time. Despite getting noticed by shots I didn’t get any offers to direct any commercials but instead I got a job on a Swedish supernatural TV show, hunting down people who had experienced paranormal activities. On shoestring budgets I did interviews and shot reconstructions of their experiences. It was a great film school for me, trying to make these short stories as cinematic as possible with only a camera and a couple of light bulbs.

One day out of the blue I got a call from a producer in Italy who offered me to direct a weird, dark little commercial. I thought it was a prank call at first. But it wasn’t. After the job was done, he then had me stay to write and shoot some more twisted and dark spec commercials which he tried to sell directly to clients. None of them sold, of course. But they helped me develop my voice and to get signed by a newly opened London company called Harry Nash where a young Ringan Ledwidge was making a splash in the industry. I was lucky to get my first London jobs on boards that he passed on. 

At the time in London, Frank Budgen was the god of directors, and I was obsessed with Frank’s wonderfully dark humour, and the cast that he always found. I heard he played tennis, so I challenged him to a game, and we started playing together and formed a friendship that lasted for years. He is a real artist. The master of pushing ideas and the cast to their maximum darkness... And still getting them to air on TV.

When Jonathan Glazer came out with his brilliant Guinness Swimblack it blew my mind with its beautiful optimism. It truly set a new standard for the industry. I think it’s one of the best commercials in history, nothing compares to it. It's a benchmark that shows what a commercial can do in terms of being authentically inspiring and filled with humour and heart.

I have nightmares about my director friends calling me up and accusing me of stealing their shit.

Working on the script with creatives and then finding the right cast is, for me, where I try to be most focused. When that foundation is set, everything else kind of falls into place. And you can really start to have fun exploring and allow yourself to be more playful when you shoot.

Early in my career, I used to wake up in the middle of the night the day before the shoot, realising that the cast or story wasn’t good enough to reach the script’s full potential. The shoots got very messy. Luckily, I’ve become robust enough not to let that happen anymore.

I sometimes worry about the sheer volume of references that get thrown around before a project starts. Although, it’s also such a vital part of the process to get things going and make clients comfortable. I have nightmares about my director friends calling me up and accusing me of stealing their shit. So, as we get going, I’m quite specific about making sure that we all work very hard to throw away our references and let the film exist in its own right.

Above: Fredrik Bond’s The Entrance and The Date turned Heineken’s “Open Your World” proposition into exuberant, music-led adventures starring impossibly charismatic men.

Directing my first feature, Charlie Countryman, was so vastly different to directing commercials. But it was also such a treat to be immersed for such a long time in the world of the movie. The experience of developing deep connections with the crew and actors was cathartic... It's harder to do in commercials but I try every time. Working so closely with Shia LaBeouf was an inspiring experience like no other. To experience how deeply he immersed himself into the role. Method acting on steroids. He could, at times, disappear for a few days and come back having lived out the character in Bucharest. It was a challenge, but it made it all come alive. Dangerous but ultimately extremely rewarding. Such a mind-blowing eye-opener.

Whether it's a commercial or a film, I make sure that we're all interconnected and are truly making the same thing. And also just having a really great time while doing it. That’s vital to me. Every set is so much more creative when everyone feels safe to contribute and there is laughter. I try to always get the right team together in order for that to happen. Even if it's serious stuff we're doing, creativity just flows better when you're in a happy state.

Working so closely with Shia LaBeouf was an inspiring experience like no other.

I’ve just finished a project with Stink UK and Stella, a brand I absolutely love. We were so deep into the project we banned every single digital device on set apart from monitors and cameras. Even watching the storyboard on iPads was a no-no. Which annoyed the hell out of our AD. But it led us all to be much more connected. I think people really appreciate that nowadays. Everybody gets more emotionally attached to each other and much more invested in what we're crafting.