In the world of spotmaking, directors can attain star-like status, but the Swedish collective called Acne Film, which directs stateside out of bicoastal RSA USA, doesn’t want the spotlight to shine on any single one of its six members.
"We work as a group," says Tomas Skoging, one of Acne’s directors. "We don’t want to focus on personality too much."
While Skoging won’t delve deeply into the backgrounds of the Acne collective, he does note that the members of the sextet have experience in editing, graphic design, art, music, film and advertising. Acne consists of Skoging, Jesper Kouthoofd, Henrik Sundgren, Fredrik Edfeldt, Max Vitalie and Åsa Cederquist.
Acne recently broke into the U.S. market with five humor-based spots in the ESPN "Without Sports" campaign out of Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), New York. The ads, "Shelf/ Medical Condition," "Kiss the Double," "Stealing," "Boss" and "Traveling," depict office workers using a shelf and a ball to play a made-up version of baseball. Each spot finds the guys squabbling over the game’s rules, and each ends with the tagline: "Without sports, a shelf would just be a shelf."
It’s often said that humor varies from country to country, but the Swedish collective created hilarious ads that feel right at home on American television. The team, which looks forward to doing more stateside projects, notes that they didn’t have to approach the humor in the ESPN ads any differently than they would have in Europe. "Hopefully, [the agency] called us because they wanted the Acne style," says Skoging. "We worked like we always do."
At first, Acne did have concerns about a language barrier. "When I saw the [ESPN] script for the first time I thought it was great," says Skoging. But the director was worried that there could possibly be problems since English is not Acne’s first language, and the ad (only one "Shelfball" spot was originally planned) was dialogue-based. "It is hard to [express] all those small variations in how you can deliver a line, but we had a conference call with Wieden+Kennedy," relates Skoging. "We decided to go for that script and they really liked our treatment."
Brian Cooper, the agency producer on the spots for W+K, says that it was clear that the collective was going to bring their special touch to the script. "Through their reel, and based on what they said on the first call, they got across the way they approach things," notes Cooper. "They automatically put it through an Acne filter. What really got us was the way they always search for unique characters who aren’t in there, just for the sake of being weird.
"They came back with pages of reference material—character photographs, storyboards and a treatment," continues Cooper. "The thing that stood out most was the direction they were going to go with casting. We knew they were going to be interesting characters."
A great deal of improvisation went into making the spots. "Things happen on the shoot that you can never expect," says Skoging. "If you have that space to work in, it’s really nice. You can bring things out from the actors and push them in the right direction. In casting, you can tell which actors can deliver funny stuff on the shoots."
The collective’s improv is grounded in detailed pre-production work. "[Acne] felt strongly that we should cover the script so that we always had a base to cut to," says Cooper. "They also let these great actors take ownership of the game. You can almost describe our shoot day as fourteen hours of controlled improv. The one spot that we set out to do turned into seven or eight great spots, five of which made it through to the end."
Team Effort
How, exactly, do Acne’s members collaborate on projects? "It’s a little bit different each time," says Skoging. "Every project is unique. It is a question of who is best for each job."
"All six directors work together everyday," says Kattis Berggren, one of Acne’s two executive producers; the other is David Olsson. "That means when a script comes into the house, everyone in the group looks at it." Then, through a natural process, it becomes clear who will take on the project, she says.
"There might be one director on the shoot, but two in pre-production," says Henrik Sundgren. "It’s nice to have someone to pitch ideas against for a while. That person might go on to do another project or stay on."
As an example, Sundgren cites "Men Thank Fox’s"—a spot for Fox’s Biscuits out of agency St Luke’s, London, and produced via Outsider, London, the group’s U.K. roost—to illustrate how Acne works. "[It was] an interesting project because we split up into two teams and we shot different scenes at the same time," says Sundgren, who co-directed with Skoging on the spot.
"We wanted to do as much as possible," Skoging adds. "The shooting time was quite tight so we decided to [form teams] and shoot different scenes."
"And [deal with] one creative each," laughs Sundgren.
On the ESPN spots, Skoging and Max Vitalie did the treatments, then Skoging took care of pre-production duties, and both shot the spots.
Acne Film, which launched in 1996, and represents the collective for spots everywhere except the United Kingdom and the United States, also produces music videos. It is part of the Acne Group, which includes Acne Action Jeans and Acne Creative, an internal advertising and design agency. Additionally, the Acne Group has an interest in Ikonoskop, a Swedish company that makes cameras, including what they bill as the smallest commercial 16mm camera. Recent Acne spotwork includes jobs for John Smith through TBWA, London; OLW Cheez Doodles, out of agency King, Stockholm; and So-Net via Hakuhodo, Tokyo.
"Of course, everything was a little bit bigger," says Skoging of working in the United States. "I thought the differences were supposed to be bigger, but it was more or less the same as working in Sweden or England."
