It is doubtful that anyone was happier to see we still had power to work our tv sets after y2k than Gary Prouk of Toronto advertising and marketing consulting firm The Sebastian Consultancy and director Eugene Beck of Angel Films.

The duo’s newest spot for AGF Mutual Funds, ‘Father Time,’ aired nationally on several Canadian networks just after clocks struck midnight and was billed as the first spot of the new millennium.

The ad features the passing of a torch from 1999 to 2000, with 1999 represented by a haggard-looking old man wearing a long cloak and beard and a mane of gray frizzy hair. He is draped in a sash reading ‘1999’ and is walking slowly down a vast corridor with stone columns on either side extending into infinity.

Before wandering off forever, he takes one sad, tired look back at the cryptic path he has just walked and then continues his journey into history. As he leaves, a door opens at the beginning of the corridor and out peeks a child. Realizing there is no need for caution, the child happily prances out of the doorway, wearing a diaper and a second sash reading ‘2000.’

The Sebastian Consultancy has been on retainer with agf for much of 1999. agf’s campaign tagline ‘What are you doing after work?’ has been a success, depicting Spiderman on the golf course, Gumby and Pokey lounging on a beach, and a host of other timeless characters, the most recent being Quasimodo. To plan the retirement of the 1900s, agf began talking to Prouk.

‘With the millennium and all that stuff happening we were talking to the client and said it would be terrific to do a spot based on ‘What are you doing after work?,’ given the fact it’s the end of a century and the end of a millennium,’ says Prouk, who immediately started discussing ideas with longtime friend and associate Beck. ‘We started chatting and the idea of doing a Father Time spot happened. We loved it and it was boarded up and presented to Randy [van der Starren, of agf] who also loved it and said, ‘Let’s do this.’ ‘

Prouk and Beck share a well-documented and rich history. The team was responsible for a Cadbury Caramilk spot titled ‘The Mona Lisa,’ which remains the only Canadian-made commercial in the New York-based Advertising Hall of Fame. The two had been in touch consistently over the years, working on other projects, but this was one of the very few commercial projects they teamed up on since ‘The Mona Lisa’ 25 years ago (Prouk and Beck completed some spots for Nabob together in the interim).

The two acted as the creative team on the agf spot while tackling their respective roles as director and writer. ‘We collaborated on the spot’s creative,’ says Prouk, ‘which was nice because there were no middlemen. We had presented a shooting board and we went right from that into production. It was seamless, effortless and a very nice way to work.’

Beck says the agf shoot proved to be one of the most challenging of his career, even before post, which would eventually give the spot a whole other dimension.

‘Technically, it was one of the most difficult shoots I’ve had a chance to work on in a long while,’ says Beck. ‘Knowing we had a studio of a given size and only four columns on each side of the row, the challenge was to make it look like [the columns] went on forever. We worked very closely with the people at Optix on where we were headed and how best to achieve that.’

Indeed, the two-day shoot was overseen by Optix co-owner and senior compositor George Levai, who consulted director Beck and dop George Willis on how the post would fit into the spot based on what they were shooting on-set. He was also watchful to be sure they would stay within the budget.

‘While shooting we had to supply Optix with lots of plates, which they required to complete the cgi stuff in a really effective but economical way,’ says Beck. ‘We were not only dealing with something we were trying to make esthetically beautiful, but something that technically had to work in the final analysis – and I think it did.’

He credits the look of the agf spot partly to cinematographer Willis, whom Beck had worked with a number of times previously.

‘George Willis was a very good choice for this particular project,’ says Beck. ‘George is a good combination of someone with good technical knowledge and a great sense of esthetic. That’s what was really required.’

Right out of the starting blocks, it was agreed that the look of the ad would border on the styles of two classic filmmakers: Orson Welles and Frank Capra.

‘It has some [Welles-esque] dramatic elements and is very strong graphically, with a bit of the heart and soul of Capra,’ explains Beck.

The heart and soul of the commercial comes bounding through the door in the form of Baby New Year near the spot’s conclusion. To help with the complexities of a baby on-set, a baby wrangler was hired, which Beck believes ‘is a very valuable asset. They aren’t used anywhere near as much in Canada as when I shoot in the u.s.’

After two days of shooting, Optix’s Levai and a second senior compositor, Dave Hedley, finished up on the agf millennium commercial. Hedley composited in the smoke, clouds and shadows that would add to the somewhat gloomy atmosphere of the spot. They also completed the daunting task of making four columns seem as though they went on for infinity.

‘With the infinity shot, the one with all the columns, what they wanted was Father Time from one take and all of the smoke on the floor from another take, which caused a bit of a problem,’ says Hedley. ‘I had to replicate all of the columns off into infinity. It is actually about 50 layers but you can’t tell by looking at it.’

The offline editing was completed by Alex Eaton at Stealing Time.

‘Father Time’ aired right on schedule on Jan. 1, 2000, just after midnight. As an added bonus, Prouk explains, the spot can be used every year around the holidays, with just a small post adjustment made to the sashes to read the correct coming and outgoing years.

‘It’s nice to have it running every year,’ says Prouk. ‘You’ll kind of look forward to it, I think.’

When asked if the team of Prouk and Beck will continue making spots together, Beck remarks, ‘I would certainly hope so. It works, and one of the reasons is probably because we’ve both done so much television storytelling that we don’t have to talk about things you’d normally have to talk about. More time can be spent on just following through and solving problems.’

Prouk and Beck foretell of another possible agf spot on the horizon which excites them both – but they are careful not to give away too many details.

‘If it happens, it should be pretty damn good,’ laughs Beck. ‘You get jaded after you do this stuff for a couple of decades. Getting excited about a spot is rare, and we are excited. It’s a rejuvenation of excitement, one could say.’