At one point in his life, Fredrik Bond envisioned himself becoming a top fashion photographer. But, as it turns out, Bond’s career as a lensman never got off the ground. "Unfortunately, the pictures were so bad they never took me anywhere," he says.
The fashion world’s loss is the commercial production world’s gain. When he failed to become the next Herb Ritts, Bond got into filmmaking, working at various production companies in his native Sweden. In 1996, he started his Stockholm-based shop, simply called Bond. After shuttering that firm, he joined Mod:film, Stockholm. In ’99, he signed on at his current roost, London-based Harry Nash.
Remarkably, it’s taken Bond just a few years to become one of Europe’s hottest directors. More recently, he has become known stateside for his work on the latest Lee Dungarees campaign out of Fallon, Minneapolis, featuring the one and only Buddy Lee.
Bond shot three spots—"Roy," "Super Greg," and "Curry"—for the campaign, titled "The Buddy Lee Challenge." The ads present Buddy, the 12-inch spokesdoll for Lee Dungarees, facing bizarre challenges such as go-kart racing and kung-fu. For instance, "Super Greg" finds Buddy Lee competing in a DJ-scratching contest against real-life spinner Super Greg to see who can get the dance floor hopping.
Super Greg, clad in a cheesy tracksuit, fails to inspire the crowd. Buddy Lee, on the other hand, is a much more "electric" performer. Poised between a fish tank containing an electric eel and a turntable, Buddy Lee places one arm into the water. Electric current runs through his body, causing his other arm, which is sitting on the turntable, to spasm. He scratches like a pro, at one point sailing off the DJ table and onto the dance floor, where he does a back spin to the delight of the dancers.
As the crowd raves on, a voiceover announces: "Buddy Lee wins. Excellent." When asked what it was like to work with Buddy Lee, Bond answers, "It’s like working with a really bad actor. You can’t communicate."
While Buddy Lee was unresponsive, Bond says he enjoyed working with the Fallon team, which included "The Swedes"—art director Paul Malstrom and copywriter Linus Karlsson. "They set a really good atmosphere on the set," he says of the creative team, which also inclu-ded David Lubars, Mike Lescarbeau, and producer Brian DiLorenzo. "They were open minded and wanted to try things. They didn’t lock into, ‘We have to do it this way.’ They had an open form, which was really nice."
The "Super Greg" ad was carefully storyboarded, but Bond notes that latitude was given for improvisation on the set. Having permission to experiment is important to Bond, particularly in the case of a job involving humor. "I think you have to have a general notion of where you want to go with the humor. But when you know that, when you’ve nailed that down, you should start improvising around it and let things happen. It is in those small moments that things happen," he observes.
good humor
Bond appears to have a way with comedic material. In addition to the Buddy Lee campaign, his reel includes humorous spots for adidas. The campaign, which uses the tag "adidas makes you better," was created by 180, Amsterdam, and finds athletes in silly situations. For example, "Jonah Lomu" opens with a fish gasping for air on a city street. Along comes rugby player Lomu, who scoops up the fish and begins a life-and-death sprint to save it. As Lomu runs through the city, the spot cuts to eyewitnesses who describe his heroic feat. In the end, the athlete, who is, of course, wearing adidas footwear, makes it to a dock and tosses the fish into the water. Other spots in the series included "Ato Boldon" and "David Beckham."
Meanwhile, a campaign for car-maker Skoda, which included the spots "Factory Tour," "Motor
