Being "really busy" is the new being "really tired" (seriously, take an informal survey), and yet somehow Sweden's ACNE churn out work at a rate that puts the rest of us to shame. In the last eight years, the ACNE umbrella has expanded to include an international jeans brand, a feature film production company, an advertising/design agency, and a character development company, not to mention a film crew. Add to that close affiliations with digital sound design crew Elektron and bleeding-edge film tool developers Ikonoskop, and, well, what have you done lately?

Formed in 1996, ACNE got its start by doing design work and comedy sketches for Swedish television. Since then, the collective has spawned a top-notch commercial crew who've infused a series of spots with bone-dry wit and leftfield visuals. Although ACNE Film has just recently crossed over into North America through RSA, it hasn't taken them long to make noise. Inaugural spots for ESPN through Wieden + Kennedy, NY introduced the world to an office pastime known as 'shelfball' and garnered a 2003 Gold Lion Campaign award in the process, while more recent ads for ESPN and Electronic Arts look just as promising.

In an ill-advised attempt to set the world record for best-attended conference call, we recently crossed wires with members of the ACNE crew, RSA, their dogs, some close relatives, a few neighborhood butchers and a handful of stragglers. Fortunately, through the din of cross-continental barking and random calls for red meat, managing director David Olsson and directors Henrik Sundgren and Tomas Skoging were able to impart some of "ACNE's valuable wisdom."

The whole story of ACNE says that people who like each other should come together and do fun stuff. That's basically how ACNE started. From that, we went into film, jeans and now we have our own ad agency as well. From there, the love spread out all over the world.

Everything started out with design and graphics. [We did] sketches and graphics for television, and that was the start of the film company. Of course the other companies have worked the exact same way - [ACNE Jeans] started off by sewing a hundred pairs of jeans for friends, and then it was a jeans company.

We don't do that many sketches right now, since we are busy making commercials. The main difference is that we have to come up with the ideas ourselves. It's an interesting way to work because we don't know what's going to come out of it in the end. So, it is more risky than making a commercial, when we have to do be pretty damn clear about what we are going to deliver before we get the job.

I remember the first spots that we did, but Tomas won't allow us to talk about them. We went up to this ski resort in the north of Sweden to make a hot dog commercial, but Tomas was dressed like he was at the beach, so the first thing we did was bought him some clothes. That was one of our first jobs.

The first film we did, we didn't know what a pre-production meeting was, so we made the film before the meeting. The producer didn't know what to charge for. He was in a right state!

I think there have been several spots that have taken us up different steps. We did one commercial very early in Sweden for [a painkiller], which had a little man playing a guitar for a patient who had a really bad headache. That one is very well known in Sweden. We also did another thing in Super-8 for a Swedish muesli. It was about some knights around a round table.

The idea is what draws us to a job; that we can do something new and cool cinematically or put forth an idea that turns us on. We like when people react to what we do.

When we get boards and scripts in, we pass them around and everybody has a say. It depends on who's available and who likes the scripts. There are two directors on most of the jobs; we tried to work three for one job but that didn't really work out. We get together and talk about them so there's always somebody new to get ideas and inspiration from.

Interesting fact: ACNE has the world record in pre-pro meetings. We had an 11 1/2 hour pre-pro meeting. Very long!

I think they were actually playing the shelfball game at Wieden's office for a long time before they decided to make a commercial out of it. It's a fun game, but there are very strict rules about how you play and how you behave. It's very serious.

An anecdote: Once, a couple of directors decided to wrestle in order to wake up in the morning. It ended quite badly. We had to get a helicopter with a doctor who provided neck support and efficient painkillers. But the film turned out good in the end. And the director is now doing well, after six months of physical rehab.

In ten years' time, we will have a couple of feature films and documentaries on the shelves and we will still be discovering how far we can go.

We see ourselves expanding into more avenues, but don't ask us what we're expanding into, because we don't know!

WEBFILES:

RSA> http://www.rsafilms.com

ACNE> http://www.acne.se