Martin, we’re excited to get to know you. You’ve lived and worked all over the world. How have you experienced different working cultures, especially relating to creative collaboration and working with agencies?

Martin: “Well, that’s a very interesting question on several levels. You can talk about how the work is done creatively around the globe, but also about how it has changed dramatically over time since I’ve been doing this. It’s a whole different animal nowadays.

Travelling around the world has been a standard in my life. When I was a child, we were moving quite a lot. When I got to the age of leaving home, I went to study abroad in the US. So I’ve always been a globetrotter, and now being a director, I’m normally on the road almost six months out of the year. I enjoy that very much.

Even though I experience so many different cultures, one thing I like is that in commercials, the meetings, the cameras, etc. … – they’re the same all over the world. It’s the same structure of briefing to production to PPM and so on. So that gives a bit of security when travelling. However, when you arrive in a new part of the world or an unfamiliar culture, you of course still have to understand what the culture is that you’re in. You have to understand their hopes and dreams for the film and what they’re expecting of you as a director. My job is to deliver that and make them happy. That’s the foundation of the whole thing.

For example, I’ve had two projects in my life where we were making the same commercial for 6 different territories around the globe. We would shoot it 6 times. The commercials all have the same story, but in the Middle East you might have to tone things down and show more respect from a son towards his father or something like that. You have to deal with the script and the acting in a different way. And then you move on to the next territory like India, for example, where it all has to be more Bollywood and dramatic and you have to step it up. That’s actually one of the things I really love about working all over the world.”

While working all over the world, in your films you also create new worlds. Is it hard to know how far to push the boundaries of reality?

Martin: “For me, it’s a play between reality and fantasy. I like to try to do something that’s in between. I find it a little bit boring, flat, or two dimensional to do things traditionally and to push the right buttons for a certain genre. I love when people come back to me and say: ‘Look, I don’t know what that was, but we liked it.’

I always try to do as much as possible in camera, and then I figure out how much should be done on top of that in CG or post-production-wise. It’s a matter of determining how much we want to twist it in one or the other direction. As I move forward with the project and we start discussing how to make it come to life, things will evolve. That’s where it’s really created. Sometimes I’m in doubt, and I’m looking for the truth in the process, and we find it as we go. And some agencies or brands don’t like to deal with that. Especially in these time with all the anxiety that we talked about.

Nowadays, sometimes I have to use this metaphor in front of clients on set that are just meddling too much. Of course, not all clients are like that, but when they are, I just tell them: ‘Imagine that you’re walking into my fine dining restaurant, and we spend hours talking about what kind of a meal you want, what your palette is like. And then I walk into the kitchen ready to make your beautiful meal, but then when I turn around there’s a flock of people following me into the kitchen, wanting to stir my pots!’ When it gets to be too much, I have to tell them to just sit down and trust me because then I say: ‘When I bring you the first course, you’re going to go “Yummy!”’ The question nowadays is really, who decides the recipe? When you have people left and right just adding ingredients as they please, the meal will go to hell. It’s a disaster to agree to work together without having talked about how to get there.”

You’ve been around for quite some time as a director in commercials. What has been your main motivation in creating film throughout your career?

Martin: “Before I answer, let me just state that the industry has changed tremendously in the last 10-15 years. Nowadays, I find projects sometimes feel rooted or founded in some sort of angst or anxiety, and my first briefing is all the places where it could go awry. That’s the wrong place to start. In the earlier days, it felt more like there was a dream of creating something, leaning much more into an artful way of thinking, and now it’s almost backwards. The creatives today have developed this way of speaking with the client and they use the same language when they brief a director. And I like to be well-briefed, but it’s coming to be more of a list of warnings. A lot of the bravery is gone. I hope the industry is able to loosen up and laugh a little bit more, and feels free to explore more creativity again. I love working close with a client and listening to their requests, it’s my job to make them happy within the assigned budget. I don’t like to be managed in every way, but I like to be involved”

“In answer to your question: my motivation comes from what was in my mind in my childhood or youth, as that is what drove and still drives me. When I look back, I remember having to go home with my head down and show my parents what the teachers had written on my report card. ‘Martin would really do well if he put more of an effort into his schoolwork’ or ‘He seems to be drifting off a lot and isn’t really present in class.’ And that was absolutely true. The vivid imagination that you have as a child, I always try to keep that with me. I try to add that to some of the work that I do, because it’s a pity that we don’t have more of that around.”

“I’ve tried to hold on to that imaginative side. I think as an adult, we lose that way too soon. We carry it in us, though, and we can be touched in that place in our hearts when we watch tv or cinema. It sort of awakens that inner child or imagination that we have, but there’s just so many walls built around it as we grow older.”

Nowadays, we see brands and agencies wanting to make commercials that feel real, authentic, genuine, or at least as credible as possible, whereas the playful, dream-like fantasies that you create are the total opposite. Do you feel like one has more value than the other, or why do you think ‘realness’ is so important to some?

Martin: “To me, when a client asks for ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ or any of those typical words, they feel like empty words. They want speak to viewers in an honest way, because they feel that if they don’t, viewers might write the film or product or brand off. But it doesn’t say anything to me. Although what they end up creating may feel real and authentic, it also often times feels flat.

Leaving something for the viewers to actually put together for themselves, to ask something of the viewer, is much more valuable to me. Reality or authenticity is different for every person, it’s a very subjective thing. My reality is not the same as yours, for example.

I try to approach it in the same way I experience the world. I can close my eyes and listen to the wind, or I can see or smell the ocean, and by twisting those sensations of reality around just slightly, they can also have this magic realism. It’s really just a metaphor of something that you should feel, or of a mood that speaks to you. So I don’t think it’s a matter of this or that, reality or fantasy. I find there’s more value to something in between. I agree that you have to speak to the viewer honestly in order to get your message across, but you can be honest about a fantasy.”

Is that magic realism style a genre where you feel good, like a comfort zone? What is a comfortable project for you?

Martin: “It’s a very good question, because I don’t think I know. It’s probably the same for directors in Belgium, because coming from a smaller country like Denmark with only 5 million people – you start your career as a director by getting advertising on local tv. And even that was a very small world when I started. You have to do humor, you have to do more aesthetic stuff, you have to do drama, etc. You kind of do the whole thing right from the start. You don’t have the option or the luxury to be ‘a car director’ in Denmark. It just doesn’t exist. You can’t be a director of only one type of thing because if you are, you might only do a film every two years. So you have to be able to do all genres if you want to be successful in a country like Denmark.

It made me thrive outside the comfort zone. That’s one of the things I love: every job I’ve done is different. I’ve never done the same thing twice in almost thirty years of doing this. I love it outside my comfort zone, but not too far away. I find it exuberant. Life is more exuberant when you’re able to dance upon the uncertainties, you know? If you just sit back, nice and comfortable in your chair every day, it doesn’t drive you forward. If there’s no transformation, and if I don’t place myself somewhere out of that comfort zone, then there’s no motion. It helps me grow, and it also makes you vulnerable to all kinds of things. A lot of good stuff can come out of that.”

Some of your commercials are quite long for a commercial. Is length important? How do you channel all your ideas into a commercial?

Martin: “Most of the stuff that I have on my reel and that I’m proud of is work that has more of a mood and takes you on a journey. Sometimes, it takes a little more than 30 seconds to get the viewer fully into that emotion or vibe or mood that it needs.

I’m a great fan of short formats if the idea is there, but the work that I do is more about drawing the viewer into something. I build it up, and then there’s a transformation or a crescendo, and so on. That just takes a little longer. The work I did for Penny Naturgut is a good example there. It’s 1 minute and 35 seconds, and they aired that version. That was very satisfying.”

As a final question: What are you expecting in 2021, or what are you hoping for? Will you be enjoying more time at home or are you eager to get back into travelling and working?

Martin: “I think that after this is all over, I think we all need to celebrate whatever it is that bring us joy and keep welcoming it into our hearts. Now that we’ve had this time to explore within ourselves and maybe get back to some of the essential and important things in life a little bit, like that inner child and that playfulness, maybe that sticks while things get back on track. Hopefully I will find myself on the road doing my work in a very joyful way, and hopefully people will invite me to be a part of that. I think that that’s actually worth something, and we can all benefit from that.”

Read our previous Talk with Peter Lydon (UK) here.

A production company listing over 500 talented directors.