Lufthansa

We had been in Cape Town filming. My old boss, Martin Werner, was on another job that was delayed due to bad weather, and he had to go to Lufthansa in Frankfurt to do a commercial. Instead of him being on time, he sent me.

I went through everything with the client and the agency: The treatment, the location, the cast. The client was obviously not happy: Martin was the superstar, and who was I again? I spent most of the time ensuring them that I could do this should he not make it. The rest of the time I prepared for the shoot.

The days leading up to the shoot I figured he would get there in time. But the closer we got, the more I realized that it was actually an option that I would be the director and not him. When he called me from London and told me his plane had to land there because a person died on it, I said to myself: “OK, now I’m gonna do it.” This is it.

By pure luck Martin arrived 20 minutes before the cameras started to roll. I was happy that he made it, but obviously it was a bit anticlimactic since I’d leaned so much into it.

Jaguar

This is footage from a campaign shoot with Jaguar. The screenwriter Ashley Avis was researching for her film Black Beauty, and Jaguar tapped into that story so her research became a part of the campaign.

We went on location with Ashley to Lompoc, California, to a huge wild horse sanctuary measuring 5.000 acres. The sanctuary, Return to Freedom, is a fenced area, but the size of the sanctuary is so enormous that you never actually see the fence.

We went up there a few times to scout and make sure that everything was prepared correctly: Where and when do we get the best light, what’s the ideal location, how do we arrange the days so we get the most out of the magic hour just when the sun sets. There was red dust everywhere, so we had to cover our gear.

The size of the sanctuary makes it difficult to actually find the horses. We used drones to search for them. There was a guy who was an expert on locating them with the help of hay. He was able to lead them in the right direction, but soon after the horses ate the hay they just vanished again.

As a director in Denmark you involve yourself in the film up until the very last edits. In America, as soon as everything is shot, you hand over the finalization of the film to the agency. It’s different, but it’s just another way of working. Some directors insist on having a final say, and that’s how “Director’s Cut” versions of films come about, but no-one pays you to do them so it depends on how much of your own time you wish to invest. I chose not to.