The Players Film Company’s Bradley Walsh had a fire lit under him early in his career when a creative director he went to for advice said Walsh might not have what it takes to be a director.

In the two years since, Walsh has compiled an impressive reel and was selected by this year’s First Cut judges as one of the five most promising new directors in the country.

As a kid, Walsh was into writing and when he got older he had plans to be a veterinarian. At the age of 15, he got his hands on his grandfather’s old cameras and became interested in photography. But it was the 1984 movie The Killing Fields that turned him on to filmmaking.

‘After seeing the movie I decided that I was going to be a photo-journalist, and then I realized it wasn’t so much that which appealed to me but the actual film itself and the idea of making a movie,’ he says via cell phone on his way to scout a location. ‘I was crying and I decided I wanted to make movies and tell stories that make people feel.’

Having never rolled a foot of film, Walsh put together a portfolio and won a scholarship to York University film school where he made a small, 47-minute black comedy called Transplant with some big talent attached to it.

Six months after the rest of his class had graduated, Walsh and school chum Steve Milne were still working on this ambitious and expensive short which starred Saul Rubinek and Maury Chaykin.

Dubbed ‘The Schmooze King’ by his friends, Walsh worked as a volunteer at the Genies and took full advantage of his position to network and chat up the big boys.

‘I would go and talk to anyone, there is no harm in it,’ says Walsh. ‘I just went right up to Saul and talked to him about my film. He said no at first, he did not want to get involved. But then we worked it out. We made the screenplay stronger and away we went.’

The film didn’t sell or win awards, but it was an invaluable education in filmmaking.

One credit short of graduating, Walsh left film school behind (he still plans to go back for that last credit) and went in the opposite direction – he took a job in a wood shop making skids.

‘When you graduate from film school you are one in a thousand in Canada and no one offers you a job to direct a film right away. They say, `Welcome to the world of being a pa.’ I decided that if I couldn’t direct I’m going to go completely opposite,’ he says. ‘I had no wisdom but I needed cash and did not want to pa.’

Just as he was beginning to come undone from the tedium of a non-expressive, non-creative workplace, he got the call to shoot his first video for a band called The Nines. He bid adieu to the wonderful world of the wood shop and with a few buddies opened Toronto music video production company Projector Images and Sound.

It was during the ‘mad’ days at Projector that he bumped into Luc Frappier, then with Zoo tv, who got Walsh on the roster at Zoo, where he made his first foray into commercials with an ambitious spot for the nba, which aired across the u.s. and to this day remains one of his favorites.

Another job he puts ‘way up there’ is a guerrilla-style spot for Tim Horton’s shot in the Middle East that had him ‘frightened as hell’ and living through a Midnight Express-style ordeal (sans the drugs taped to his body).

All the paperwork was in place for the small crew of two to go to Kuwait but when the story evolved and brought them to Bahrain trouble ensued.

‘It was a miracle that we went there in the first place, it was a hot bed,’ says Walsh. ‘We were hauled into a little room, they confiscated all my stuff, and from what I could discern from the body language and the gesturing, they were really upset.’

Aside from shooting spots, the constantly on-the-go director is in the midst of writing an autobiographical screenplay based on his crazy days with Projector. He also writes poetry and draws, is a fashion photographer, plays bass and guitar in a band called Mishaforke at downtown Toronto venues, still shoots the odd video, and makes picture frames out of recycled metal which at one time he sold to Robin Kay stores across Canada.

He also claims to be the world’s greatest frog catcher, the subject of his Ontario Film Development Corporation’s Calling Card Program short, Frog Pond. The 25-minute comedy/drama, which Walsh describes as On Golden Pond meets Dazed and Confused meets Stand By Me, was inspired by a little game he played with his stepfather whereby he was paid five cents for each frog he caught.

According to Walsh, the film is a great little slice of Canadiana without the cheese and will appeal to anyone who remembers 1977. It just got a thumbs-up from Getty Lee and the boys of Rush who agreed to have a couple of their songs included in the soundtrack after seeing the film.