How did you first get together to direct and make films?
We both studied together and met at our cinema school. We started co-directing pretty soon after, but just as a creative experiment: writing scripts and later making music videos. Because there was no pressure like clients or agencies, and only our own personal demands, we realized that we complemented each other very well. And that encouraged us to get into advertising.
We try to keep to the same philosophy, no matter which kind of project you are doing, we are both self critical and try to make the films as good as possible by putting together our different points of view.
How does your creative process work – do you both work on every stage of film making together or do you both have different strengths that are put to use separately?
As a creative team sometimes one feels more closer to an idea or concept, but what we love to do is to make the other one part of it. That’s what a project is all about, to join different creative forces and try to make it fun. This doesn’t mean that we see the project from a female and male perspective, because both of us can be very sensitive and wild at the same time. We love to talk a lot and share different ideas and find common ground, until we have a great creative agreement. Then we know that we have something good.
You seem to be comfortable with quirky characters that are often having improbable alliances. Is this because you get involved in the script writing at an early stage or do creatives seek you out for your style?
We normally work very closely with the creatives, trying to be as involved as possible with the scripts. We think that our work as directors is always to improve the first script or storyboard that is sent to us. We start suggesting different ideas at a very early stage of the process within our treatments or even in initial calls. We feel that creatives appreciate it when you help them to improve a project, because they’ve been working and re-writing for a long time before we arrive onboard, so we try to throw fresh eyes on the project and help them to do something interesting.
We wouldn’t say that we only feel confortable with quirky heroes, it’s more about having a good cast and making interesting characters. We think this is part of our signature and creatives seem to love that.
Where do you find and cast these characters?
We enjoy creating characters, and we are always open to cast every kind of person: actors, models, non actors, street casting…etc. It depends on the project and of course on what kind of character we are looking for. But casting for us is the most important part. You can have a good art direction, an amazing location or a huge production, but if you don’t have the right characters, your film is going to be just one amongst a bunch of others.
Do you collaborate with a regular crew?
Not really, as we travel a lot and work in different countries and markets, we are used to working with different crew members. Because we think that the director has to be kind of a stylist, an art director and a DP. We both first think about the mood and feel that we are looking for and then try to get the best crew possible to project our vision.
We read somewhere you like to make music – is this a joint effort too?
We are both music freaks and have a huge collection of vinyl because we like to explore different styles and music periods. But Adrian is the composer of our duo. He is the one that is in charge of our music scores.
You seem to be focussed on commercials at the moment. Do you have any wish to film longer formats or fiction?
Cinema is what got us together as a creative team. We’ve written two different feature scripts and our goal is to develop our career in fiction. As filmmakers we think it is important to do creative work in many mediums, not just solely in advertising.
