Aleksander BachAleksander Bach is an award-winning commercial director based in Cologne, Germany. The son of a photographer, Bach was born in Poland and moved to Germany with his parents as a boy. He studied audio/video engineering and piano at the Institute for Music and Media in Düsseldorf, and completed his education in the graduate program at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. Bach has won two consecutive Young Director Awards at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, in 2008 and 2009, and a Gold Award at the 2009 New York Festival. The 2009 winner at Cannes was a black-and-white documentary-style spot for the Red Cross titled “Stars,” which was photographed by Peter Matjasko on 35 mm film. Bach’s resume also includes inventive music videos and a music documentary. Here, he opines about the state of international commercial filmmaking:
A lot is changing in European commercial production. That’s partly due to the worldwide economic crisis, but the underlying structure of how the business works is also completely changing. In the classic model, a director in the commercial industry is represented by a production company. Lately, I have clients and agencies contacting me directly. They call and ask whether I am interested in writing a story. If I say yes, they brief me about the commercial. The lines of communication are getting shorter, because it’s more efficient. That’s necessary since at the moment, budgets are shrinking. For me as a director, that’s great. I have the chance not only to direct my interpretation of a storyboard, but sometimes I’m also able to write the spots myself, either with the agency or directly with the client.
