Mexican-born director Javier currently makes his home and living in Toronto with The Players Film Company. The 26-year-old Javier says in the four years he has been directing professionally he continues to learn quite a bit about both filmmaking and advertising.

Javier, the son of a diplomat, lived in Mexico until he was five, but after that, his father’s work meant Javier and his family moved a fair bit. In his youth he lived in New York, Los Angeles and London, Eng., all the while taking mental notes of the cultures he encountered and images around him.

‘We grew up going to museums and studying art and art history,’ says Javier. ‘That really got me interested in the visual aesthetic of film. Images were always in my head.’

After a few years of training, at the age of 20, Javier shot his first spot in Mexico for a perfume brand. Two years later, he signed on with Toronto’s Spy Films and divided his time between commercials and music videos. In the early going, Javier had great success with music video-making, picking up back-to-back Juno Awards for his direction of the Moist video Gasoline in 1998 and the David Usher video Forest Fire in 1999, the same year he moved to The Players Film Company.

Javier directs in both Toronto and Mexico, where he is repped by Zeta Films. In what may be a surprise to many, Javier says there are not too many differences between the two locales in terms of production, but he has taken notice of how much energy the Mexican crews put into a shoot.

‘They work very hard and are very professional,’ says the director of Mexican crews. ‘The days are longer in Mexico and people are used to it. They work around the clock and there is a lot of creative energy. They just keep working, which I like. Sure you are tired at the end of the day, but you accomplish a lot.’

He says although his work in Canada is very visually rooted, Mexico gives the director a chance to prove himself in different ways, citing opportunities to do Mexican dialogue spots as an example.

‘In Mexico, they see the work already on the reel and give you an opportunity,’ says Javier. ‘Here, it is about having it on your reel and being able to show that you can do it.’

Javier says he is influenced by spots out of Europe, fashion photography and art of all kinds. He enjoys the avant-garde nature of commercial-making in Europe and says the work is similar to the spots coming out of Mexico currently. He hopes Canadian clients and agencies will take notice of the work being shipped in from overseas and down Mexico way.

‘It is much more conservative here in Canada,’ says Javier. ‘There are many talented people here, but I think on the client side of things they are not able to go too far out there as they can in Europe. In a way, Canadian advertising is very conservative, but I don’t think it wants to be.’

Some of the clients Javier has shot for are Labatt Ice and Tylenol. He recently completed a series of visually intense spots for Bacardi for the u.s. market.