They’ve been together longer than The Beatles, routinely dominating the Cannes International Advertising Festival with their one-of-a-kind brand of humor. Having made literally hundreds of spots—one of which recently earned them their first Emmy nomination for best primetime commercial, they’ve proven equally adept at music videos and would like to take on feature films as well. So it’s safe to say Traktor is not just a Swedish directing collective—it’s a way of life, and a very busy one at that.
So busy that they could only be interviewed via e-mail, and so collective that they answered each question as a single entity, Traktor—a.k.a. producers Richard Ulfvengren and Ole Sanders, and directors Pontus Lowenhielm, Mats Lindberg, Sam Larsson and Patrik von Krusenstjerna—says it’s "very excited," about the Emmy nod, which it received for Nike’s "Angry Chicken." "It makes sense to our parents, who think we work in erotic straight-to-cable," notes the collective. "We are not sure how Emmy arrives at their decisions, but it’s good to be part of it."
Directed by Traktor, who are represented by bicoastal/international Partizan, via Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), Portland, Ore., "Angry Chicken" is one of three Nike spots featuring Le Parkour, a French group of urban acrobats who specialize in moving quickly and fluidly through an environment. The spot—which garnered a Gold Lion at Cannes, honors in the copywriting category at the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) Show, and a gold from the Art Directors Club (ADC), New York—shows a man racing, leaping and tumbling through the streets of Paris to get away from the eponymous foul that is chasing him. Concurrent voiceovers narrate the action in French and English.
The Traktor directors were intrigued by the project from the start. "Wieden+Kennedy had already established a contact with Le Parkour, they had written the amusing scripts, invented the chicken and had a tape containing a documentary with a very arousing twin voice-over translation," Traktor remembers. "It all made us very happy. The stories existed like archetypes on absinthe. We simply executed it with cameras and craft service."
Still, the shoot wasn’t hassle-free. "It was shot in Paris," the collective explains. "Paris is notoriously difficult to shoot in. Don’t do it. And if you do, bring gloves, a packed lunch and your mum. But the people are nice. Actually they are not. Except for the ones who work at Partizan, of course. Bless them."
As for the talent, Traktor says, "The acrobatic work [of Le Parkour] is amazing. What you see is what you get. And then some. Normally they work without crash pads, harnesses or much planning. We had to put the odd mattress in place to ensure we could sleep at night."
Chickens, on the other hand, "are un-wranglable. You can lay out some seeds, but they prefer salt. Luckily we found an angry one."
Down One
The collective has come a long way since its inception as a Swedish production company in 1991. Newly out of film school, the then-five directors and two producers found that—despite a scarcity in work—it was more fun to randomly team up on what few projects came their way.
Though their workload increased, the collective approach stuck. Traktor’s original members stayed together for more than 10 years, garnering a slew of awards and industry attention. In ’01, they added music videos to their repertoire, collaborating with such artists as Fat Boy Slim, Prodigy and Madonna. "Music videos allow us to create completely self-contained worlds with their own twisted logic, impossible visual trickery and backstage passes," Traktor says. "It’s a step closer to short films and ultimately movies."
Exciting stuff—but not quite exciting enough for director Ulf Johansson, who recently became the first member of Traktor to go solo. "Ulf was increasingly doing his own thing for the past year," Traktor shares. "He was not excited by the same things as the rest of us, such as music videos and badminton. That is the sad part, although after ten years, things like that are bound to happen.
"The eventual departure was actually more of a relief," continues Traktor. "The only surprise was that he did it simply with a short e-mail on the first day of our annual holiday. He will do great. And we will have more fun. We are busier than ever." (Johansson recently founded his own shop, Smith and Jones Films, North Hollywood and London.)
That’s saying a lot, as Traktor has been working almost constantly for the past few years. The fruits of their labor were particularly visible at Cannes. "Angry Chicken" captured Gold Lions in both the clothing and footwear categories, while "Young Love," another Traktor-directed Nike spot featuring Le Parkour, snagged a Bronze Lion. Three of the collective’s ads for Tango soft drinks—"Barrel-Miss," "Barrel" and "Postman," out of Clemmow Hornby Inge, London—were part of a Gold Lion-winning, six-spot package. And then there was the stunning, CGI-intensive "Face of the Future," helmed by Traktor for Xelibri Mobile Phones out of Mother, London, which earned a Silver Lion in the home electronics and audio visual category.
A memorably comic science fiction adventure, "Face of the Future" depicts a young man in an oppressive, futuristic society, who becomes a fugitive for dancing in public. At the spot’s culmination, a little girl picks the wrong guy in a line-up, and the "dance criminal" escapes to an island with his trusty mechanical dog. The most striking aspect of the ad is its "cast." Everyone—from the little girl to the police officers to the dance criminal himself—has the exact same face.
According to Traktor, the lead actor portrayed only the dance criminal, while his face was attached to the bodies of all the other actors via CGI. "We shot the main body of the spot over five days in and around L.A.," recalls the group of directors, who enlisted the help of effects house The Moving Picture Company, London. "After locking an approved cut, we then shot our hero for four days against green screen in London. On the main shoot in L.A., we had to get ‘performances’ from people whose heads would not be featured in the finished spot; however, they still needed to act vigorously to provide a good guide for our hero on the green-screen shoot. Then on the green-screen shoot, we had to get the performance, action, perspective, etc., one hundred percent correct. There is not much you can do to compensate in the compositing."
The concept was "pretty unique for us," says Traktor, who shot 185 specific set-ups, plus "endless reams of generic replacement material from all possible angles" for the ad. "The idea of creating a steam-driven future where some things have developed to an amazing degree, and other aspects seem to have stagnated was tremendously appealing."
With several projects on the horizon in the U.S. and Europe, the future looks quite "steam-driven" for Traktor. Soon, the collective hopes to add feature films to its considerable list of credits. "Much as with commercials or music videos, an individual or two would be in charge," Traktor explains. "We will do movies in time, and look forward to that. We are tinkering with projects, but until there are tickets to be purchased, we will keep the faith."
And they will do it as a collective of six, not seven. "We do not need to replace Ulf," the group notes. "Nor would we want to. Our Traktor machine is resourceful, adaptive, excitable and busier than ever. Let’s dance!"
