The Dapper Dane

This is one of my personal favorites. Our young talent just has “it”. The DP work and edit is by Jim Webb, my long time collaborator and I know he considers this one of his finest efforts too. In my time, I’ve been lucky to work with very good creatives. On top of that list is Chris Wood who just has a knack for always introducing me to great positive powerful projects. This spot was part of a print campaign for AMD and this piece ran as an active link on the Wired ads in 2011. Client: AMD, Agency: SicolaMartin, Creative Director: Chris Wood.

A fantastic opportunity to work for a really fun brand. We used all our team resources and cashed in many favors to pull this off. The hero is Keegan Jones who is also one of the original Gowalla partners. Tomas Erhart, famous Berlin based DP, flew in for this shoot. I had met him while I was in Berlin pitching my idea for a film. On our location scout Tomas and I went up with Miles, reggae rock star dj and pilot, in his Chinese fighter pilot training propeller airplane, featured in the spot. Tomas grew up in the Alps and skied all his life. In other words not affected by g-force at all. Not me. I grew up in flat Denmark. The humble peasant that I am…I almost passed out when he pulled me around in a vertical loop in the tiny green plane. The illustrations are by Will Bryant and our editor Malcolm spent many months pulling it all together. Chris Blankenship was a terrific hands on producer during a five day shoot! Client: Gowalla, Agency: SicolaMartin, Creative Director: Chris Wood. Co-producers: Chris Blankenship and Dianna Colton. Music by Matt&Kim

Here’s a spot that features lovely Ali. Also for Purina Cat Chow’s Facebook page. They have been an amazing client and I love working with them. Client: Purina Cat Chow, Agency CheckMark.

This was the first in a series of many spots for Purina Cat Chow that helped them increase their facebook audience to over 300 000 friends. It was an unscripted introduction of their facebook hostess Jennifer that we shot in the intimacy of her home. Jim Webb edited these spots with a tender hand to showcase Jennifer’s wonderful spontaneous and authentic being. We later on went to Los Angeles and New York to shoot more spots for Cat Chow and most recently did the very successful We Are Cat People spot featured on my homepage. Client: Purina Cat Chow, Agency: CheckMark.

Still to this day I’m impressed by the fact that our young star of this spot memorized the entire copy. It’s a complicated spot titled “Brainiac”. And she performed it without the assist from a teleprompter. Her second take was virtually word for word perfection. Saved us a lot of time. Many thanks to Chris Blankenship and Dianna Colton for getting me involved as a director. Client: Dell, Agency: SicolaMartin, CD:  Paula Simchak/ACD Jennifer Taylor.

This spot for AMD’s 64 processor is from 2006. It features a song by The Beta Band. Agency: SicolaMartin, Creative Director: Chris Wood. We shot this in Austin and I managed to use many favorite locations. One of them is a massive junk yard for industrial kitchen supplies. The tandem bike is a classic Schwinn. It was later taken (stolen) from me by hobos. I’m quite confident I’ll one day see it again. The DP, Jim Webb, used a combination of Panasonic equipment + lens adapters to conceive of the pre-5d look. Jim and I have worked together ever since then. And so have Chris Blankenship and I. He was the editor on this project and 6 years later we are still working together. Most recently his new company Productionfor has brought me in to direct two projects for their client HomeAway.

Everybody knows that GLBT stands for gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transsexual…but me. I didn’t know that. Funny story is that I was in Copenhagen, on vacation, when I saw the casting sessions. And for some reason it hadn’t dawned on me that this series of on camera testimonials, that I had been hired to direct, were for the GLBT community. Thus I was surprised at how almost all the real SWA employees appeared to be gay. This project was very cutting edge and we shot all of this on SWA’s campus in Dallas. That has to be the most amazing organization I’ve ever had the privilege to be invited onto. Super inspirational. The team that created SWA is amazing and the walls there are covered with the SWA story. It was a fantastic experience. Chris Blankenship and his team at Productionfor did an amazing job of shepherding this project through a long pre-production and keeping us on track during brief intense shoot days. Thanks also to Mike Ferrer for always having my back! Client: SWA, Agency: GSDM, GAD: Mike Ferrer.

This was our first edit of Gowalla and it was perhaps too fast paced (the final version is on this site as well). But I do love this version for it’s raw and candid quality that in many ways reflect how we interface with social media. The beauty of social media communication is that it’s never quite finished and there’s always a new beginning that we collectively help write. It’s urgent and immediate with a borrowed track from the excellent Austin based band The Octopus Project. Catch them live!!!