Paul Cade is back in town. The award-winning director has signed with Damast Gordon and Associates, along with u.s. director Laura Belsey, based in New York.

It’s Cade’s first Canadian representation since Painted Horse, his own production house, which took down the shingle about four years ago because Cade was too busy in the States to man the Canadian shop.

All three directors are represented in the u.s. by Lovinger/Cohn and came to dga as a kind of package deal, says Susi Patterson, executive producer at dga.

‘We’re very excited. I’ve been talking to Paul for years and now it’s fallen into place.’

Cade’s most recent work are the high-profile spots for American Express in the u.s. Belsey won a Gold Lion at Cannes for a commercial on New York’s homeless.

This pub’s for you

Minus the prerequisite Volkswagen van, director David Hackl is in the middle of a tour across America. The sites, less skewed towards monuments than your average tourist romp, consist mainly of bars from Cincinnati to Houston in a kind of professional month-long monster pub crawl.

Young Canadian-born Hackl will hang with the locals in their favorite bars on a 20-day shoot for Bud Light, which started in The Buckeye State at the end of May and continues through Sacramento, San Diego, Phoenix, San Antonio and Orlando, concluding in Houston at the end of June.

Repped by L.T.B. Productions, Hackl won the pool after the Bud Light folk gave thumbs-up to two test spots he directed for them in April in Indianapolis.

More than one spot is being shot in some regions and all are airing in local markets on a three-day turnaround. The creative, through Schupp in St. Louis, is laid out as a cheers-to-the-local-people idea. For about a month, brand managers have been screening Bud Light drinkers, sliding up to unsuspecting slurpers and asking questions like, ‘What’s your favorite thing to do in this town when you’re having a Bud Light?’

The idea is to personify the people who drink the beer, says Hackl. On the surface, it sounds similar to McCann-Erikson’s (now MacLaren McCann) ‘I Am Canadian’ campaign, but it’s a more colloquial approach that emphasizes the strengths of regionalism and gets the Bud drinkers directly involved in the advertising.

The Bud Light creative is too different to invite comparisons between it and the jumping, splashing, falling, Evel Knievel visuals on the Steve Chase-directed spots for the mother brand, Budweiser, says Hackl.

Coming into the business with a background in architecture and art directing (Hackl was the art director for several Chase-directed spots in earlier days), if there is any comparing going on, he doesn’t mind being stacked up against one of the industry’s big talents. ‘One of the nice things is that the other guy is Steve Chase.’

Into the lion’s den?

With less than a month at Kessler Irish, director/dop Barry Parrell is coming out like a lion. Almost literally.

Faced again with the question plaguing him since the ‘White Lions’ spot for the Metro Toronto Zoo came out two weeks ago, there must be the fleeting temptation to answer yes, and follow up with big-cat stories rivaling Born Free.

But no. ‘I was never actually in the lion’s den,’ laughs Parrell.

Looking at the spot, no one can be expected to believe he wasn’t. Those big white furballs, 190 pounds and still kittens, look about an inch away from the camera as they prowl around to the tune of The Lion Sleeps Tonight in creative generated at Chiat/Day.

But the shots are courtesy of a 150-600ml lens and a 10-100 zoom. An optically-correct glass is part of the zoo’s viewing area, allowing shots with a low depth of field even though the window is an inch thick.

‘Originally, we wanted to bring the lions into the studio and do a sort of white-on-white surprise, with a really pristine look,’ says Parrell. But they’re still babies and the group decided it wasn’t worth the minute possibility that something could happen to them, so in the end, it was a three-camera operation at the zoo, kept small to avoid panicking the giraffes in the next pen.’

The zoo spot is Parrell’s first with Kessler Irish, coming in the wake of a cache of awards he is gathering for This is a Video About Herpes, a 30-minute health video with creative by Healthlink Communications of Toronto.

A mix of live action and animation that plays to the teen crowd without being condescending, the video took home golds at the Houston International Film Festival and the U.S. International Film Festival in Chicago, and could have another pending at the In-Awe Awards in Palm Springs.

The signature look running through his work, which includes 20 spots for Channel [V] in Southeast Asia, has its roots in the Canadian Prairies. The symmetry of the landscapes around his home town of Climax, Sask., bred a sense of balance that translates into his pictures, says Parrell. ‘They’re not exactly square lines, like the grids that divide up the Prairies, but it’s a perception of how the whole picture works together.’

Lloyd moves to Directors

The Directors Film Company has signed director/dop John Lloyd, who has moved over from Dalton/ Kessler Productions.