How's this for good fortune: It's 1991. You've recently left your life as a painter in New York to take up music video directing in Los Angeles, and one day, despite the fact that you've never been to film school and your reel is only three months deep, you land your first proper job. It's for an unknown punk band called Nirvana, and the song is "Smells Like Teen Spirit".

See it in a movie and you'd never believe it, but that's how HSI's Sam Bayer got his start. A graduate from New York's School of Visual Arts, he stumbled into directing after falling in love with the music video's seemingly endless potential. After lucking into Nirvana and collecting an armful of MTV Video Awards in 1992, he went on to furnish bands like Blind Melon ("No Rain"), Hole ("Doll Parts") and Smashing Pumpkins ("Bullet With Butterfly Wings") with some of the decade's most iconic videos. With HSI, Bayer performed just as well in advertising, eventually scooping AICP awards for work with Nike and HP, and shooting for clients as prestigious as Coke, Pepsi and Lexus.

In 2003, with his enthusiasm flagging, Bayer left HSI for RSA Films. It was there he formed a fruitful partnership with Green Day, shooting five videos and a concert film to support the 10 million-selling American Idiot. Although re-energized, Bayer felt like something wasn't quite right, and at the beginning of this year, announced he was amicably parting with RSA to return to HSI. We caught up with the director soon after and got his thoughts on everything from painting to how the music video game has changed over the years. And don't think we didn't ask about his homecoming as well.

It was a very interesting time in the '80s in New York, I had a lot of friends who struck gold in the art market, but I never got into a gallery. To make ends meet I would do the drawings for the op-ed page of the New York Times, do book covers and albums, and PA on music videos, and I felt a real connection to the freedom and avant-garde quality of what videos were. With a lot of naivety, I got a Bolex camera, started shooting stuff, and got it in my head that my future wasn't going to be as a painter but as a filmmaker.

I DP'd the [Nirvana] video myself because we had no money. I saw all these reels but couldn't get anybody really good. I never set out to be a director/DP, but that's what happened. After that video, with a few exceptions in almost 15 years of doing it, I've shot everything myself. All the lessons I learned as a painter became a big part of my work. Color theory, composition, the interplay of light and shadow - I'm not really emulating other directors, the influences come from painters.

My first year [doing commercials] was horrific. The first job I did was a salad dressing commercial that I still remember distinctly. On the third day they were pouring this hideous vat of salad dressing onto a giant thing of lettuce, and we had a food dresser there, and I was like 'I didn't go from shooting Nirvana to salad dressing, this is not going to work out.' I think it took a good year for [HSI and I] to come to terms with what I wanted to do with advertising.

A lot of relationships have a beginning, a middle and an end, and [with HSI] it just felt like the end. Neither of us were trying that much anymore, we took each other for granted, it was getting boring, and we were at each other's throats a little bit. I envy the young kids that break into this business - that first time things are happening for you is a really exciting time, and maybe I was trying to recapture that when I left.

I've got nothing but great things to say about RSA... but maybe at the end of the day I needed to be back with my dysfunctional family. I never thought I'd return to HSI, I swore I wouldn't, but it's like growing up some place, there was a bond and relationship there that in retrospect I missed. It took time away from each other to appreciate each other.

The exciting thing about videos was that they could be dangerous, dark or experimental, and when they worked they were like beautifully made films. Now there's so much riding on them that they're kind of anonymous. It's all about gloss and making an artist look really good. It's hard for me to see the hand that crafts them anymore.

[The Green Day videos] weren't comfortable films to make, I wasn't repeating myself. Because I'd been away from it for so long and I wasn't watching MTV, I just did stuff that came from my heart. That's what I want to do with commercials. Take less work and do the right jobs... I want the business to be as excited about me as I am about the business, and it's the first time I've felt like this in a while.

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