Romance welcomes Spooner&Bonde ! Showreel
Directors spooner/bonde have worked together doing commercials for more than five years now, and although the duo always works as a tightly knit unit on the set, it does actually consist of two individuals.
Mike Spooner was born in 1974 as the son of a Danish mother and a Barbadian father. Like many healthy young boys of that time, he grew up smoking weed, watching Kung Fu movies, and playing arcade games in the local cinema. After finishing school, Mike found himself at a crossroad having to make a choice on how to spend his future: the weed or the movies. Luckily, he chose the movies and went to the European Film College to start his journey from the theatre seat to the director’s chair.
After film school, Michael started with a local Danish film company Steen Herdel & Co. Given an ultimatum to make himself indispensable within 30 days, he started pursuing his dream by learning the craft from the bottom up. The days were spent doing everything from coffee brewing to special effects work, working as a special effects assistant to Lasse Spang Olsen and Steen Herdel, while nights and weekends were dedicated to his own short film projects. Around the year 2000 Mike had conceived the idea to do a TV series in the form of a mocumentary cop show. To make the series he needed a writer, and for that job he had his old high school buddy Simon in mind.
Born in 1973, Simon had not spent a second of his life in the film business. Studying political science at the university, it was not written anywhere that he would become a director. However, to finance his studies he had worked part time at the national broadcasting company developing a comedy show which was steadily becoming more and more popular. A cd with material from the show ended up being a platinum record, and earning Simon a Danish Grammy. So when Mike called him up with the idea to do a super low budget TV series, Simon was about ready to leave the world of political science for good. The TV series was called ”P.I.S.”, and was made with an inconceivably low budget.
During the work on the TV show Mike and Simon developed an almost symbiotic relationship overseeing all parts of the process from writing, to producing, directing, and editing. After this, the two decided to work together as if they were one director.
Together Mike and Simon made two seasons of ”P.I.S,” which at the time was a novel approach to creating a dramatic series under the guise of a reality program. The series became an instant classic in Danish television, and opened the door to the world of advertising. Eager to exploit every creative soul in the kingdom Danish creatives invited the directors to do TV commercials. Lured with high budgets and lots of work, they had the opportunity to continually improve upon their creative skills as directors.
Among their first jobs was a long series of sitcom like TV spots for Toyota (more than 30 spots all in all) which won several Arnold Prizes (the ridiculously named Danish prize for Commercial Films) and established them as the go-to guys when it came to directing comedy commercials. A few years into this new adventure of directing commercial films, the duo is eager to break the boundaries of the Danish market and come out into the big world. With advertising as their playground, they continue to exert themselves in film craft and test new ideas, venturing into the world of long format content.
Tags : Bonde, Spooner, Spooner&Bonde