Like many fledgling directors, the pair's career is tied to a band, Supergrass, whose videos were their informal film school. Family and friendships tie Dom & Nic to the fuzz-rockers from Oxford, for whom the directors made their first video, "Caught By The Fuzz," on a Super 8. The group got signed, and the two directed the low-budget video for single, "Mansize Rooster." In 1994 Dom & Nic were signed to Oil Factory, London. Their ironic seaside promo for "Alright" followed the track up the charts and caught the attention of Steven Spielberg.

"He invited us over to discuss a TV series with Supergrass, saying 'I really loved your video, it was great.' We were like, 'Oh fuck,'" relates Nic. Supergrass wasn't interested in the series, but the meeting bore fruit for young Dom & Nic. "The best thing we got out of it is we lost a lot of fear of meeting people we respect, like musicians or filmmakers. After you meet Spielberg, and it was amazing, there's not a lot that's going to top that," says Nic. Dom adds: "It builds more confidence than if you go gaga when you meet them."

Videos for The Bluetones, David Bowie, The Chemical Brothers and most recently, Faithless followed, but the unsettling aura of intimidation resurfaced in a different incarnation this year in the form of a commercial campaign the pair directed for Ikea through London's St. Lukes.

The campaign depicts three middle-aged Swedish mafioso with penchants for interior design. One spot has the trio greeting a portly man emerging from his shower; in a polite manner they encourage the man to visit Ikea in an effort to improve his bathroom. He opts not to, and later, the three Swedes are seen walking away from their Volvo, which shakes from the man's attempts to escape from the trunk. Another shows the eloquent enforcers first equating the modern kitchen to the campfires of "our cave-dwelling ancestors," then encouraging a woman to visit the nearby Ikea in an effort to save her husband whom the trio have gagged and tied to an Ikea chair. The third has two of our heroes cajoling a young woman into re-evaluating her furniture shopping goals; her husband is forced to dig his own grave in the backyard as extra incentive. Each spot ends with the triad crouching slo-mo in front of an Ikea store, posing down over gangsta beats as the voice-over says, "Come and see us or we'll come and see you."

"We cast in Sweden; we were looking for fantastic actors that looked like gangsters but could deliver the lines in a straight, menacing way," explains Dom. Nic adds: "Sort of a Swedish Bob Hoskins, Michael Caine or Robert De Niro, with a controlled sort of power or evil under the surface, where you can read something odd in their faces."

The pair describe the three Ikea characters: Sven, the leader, Benny, his plump sidekick and the more sadistic third, Jonson: "Sven is an interior designer/gangster who is as interested in intimidation and killing people as he is in their wallpaper. Benny is simpler and more enthusiastic about his own interior design input; he looks at Sven with awe. Sven tries to make people like him so he can get away with anything, getting victims to smile and laugh as he intimidates. Jonson is evil and is more interested in hurting people, looking hard at them, burning into them with his eyes."

Cut by Struan Clay of London's Final Cut, Dom & Nic tightly storyboarded the entire campaign, but were willing to change shots on the fly, a process they admit is easier for directors than for creatives.

"Creatives spend weeks on an idea. We come in a week before the shoot with a rush of ideas they have to take on board and not be precious about giving things up," reflects Nic. "The process is difficult and needs to be worked out so we aren't treading on toes about what shot we want to take or how we play a scene. The worst thing in commercials is having to do a shot 25 different ways. I hate doing that, it slows things down and kills a performance."

As such, agreeing on shots before the shoot date is key to their process, not only to safeguard performances but also to save time. Similarly, Dom & Nic save time by passing over scripts that don't grab their attention (although they admit they sometimes kick themselves when they see the same work in all its splendor on the tube).

"Because there are two of us we probably do half as much work as one director, but once we've taken a job we don't work on anything else; we won't do post on one and prepro on another at the same time," says Dom. "So we might not be as prolific as we could be."

But that ensures each project has a high sheen. Working with BBH, London, they directed "Undressed" for Levi's, showing a young couple dressing each other in reverse action that manages to remain steamy; and for The Chemical Brothers', "Hey Boy, Hey Girl" video, they generated more dancing skeletons than a vintage Grateful Dead show. All of their jobs are produced by John Madsen (they work with Oil Factory in the US and the UK, although their UK commercials are produced through London's Outsider). They recently directed their first video in many moons for British dance act Faithless, as commercials have been eating up much of their time.

"We both feel that if we are going to be doing commercials we don't want to feel like puppets for a product. We collaborate with creative people on challenging and original ideas. There's the potential to make a lot of money but we are not interested in that in the slightest," says Nic. "We don't embrace the commercial industry. We're not interested in products and sometimes it's quite disgusting the way the industry works."

Dom chimes in: "If you started just going for the money it would be bad, like blood money. Selling out will come back to you and you won't get the creative stuff that will make you happy at 50, more so than a new wing on the house."