The sight of a squeegee kid poised on the corner waiting for the light to turn red is all too familiar to anyone who drives downtown city streets. In this 30-second spot, however, the skillfully driven car makes it through the intersection before even a drop of the dirty water splashes onto the windshield.

The spot is a product of a 17-day shoot helmed by Imported Artists director Richard D’Alessio and dop Stefan Czapsky for gm vehicles out of MacLaren McCann and is the top choice for editing by David Baxter at Panic & Bob.

‘Squeegee,’ featuring a series of quick-cutting back-and-forth shots, opens with a pierce-lipped guy waiting for his next customer, when out of the distance comes a speeding Sunfire. Next, the squeegee gets dunked into the water in preparation, the light changes to red, the driver gears down and the kid turns to approach the car. Then, in a split second, the light is green and the driver is gone – leaving the kid a loonie for his effort.

Since the story is told through pictures alone, many elements had to be present in order for the spot to tell the story and communicate the idea, which Baxter says is a key challenge in any job.

‘How it’s structured and the dramatic impression certainly does come from the way it is put together,’ says Baxter. ‘It was always intended to be a back-and-forth kind of thing and the shots you use and the order you use them in is what makes it work as well as it does.’

Baxter, who works often with D’Alessio, cut eight of the spots from the ‘car pool’ and says ‘Squeegee’ was a relatively straightforward storytelling job that did get a little more technical at the end when motion control was called in for the product shot.

Several passes were done for different parts of the shot: one for the car, one for part of the background, another for the sky, a time lapse pass that shows the cars streaking by and another pass for the foreground – all of which were married together to make them look like one shot.

An editor for 13 years, Baxter says that when it comes to good editing there are no longer any rules. ‘Sometimes, editing can make a boring spot more interesting because you totally cut it up and make it fast. But in a good storytelling piece, it can be simple with only a few edits that you don’t even notice,’ he says. ‘A lot of people think that quick cutting is good editing but it is not just a matter of that. It’s a lot of different things, like selecting takes and finding facial expressions that show emotion. As the editor, you are responsible for all that.’

Aside from cutting commercials, Baxter has honed his craft on long-format work. He handled the edit on a Disney mow for abc directed by Peter Bogdanovich and an hbo movie shot by Norman Jewison.