Robert Gordon believes he lived a ‘Cinderella story’ while shooting the Ontario Tourism campaign that has made the Bessies shortlist. The director/cameraman says receiving the boards for ‘Maid of the Mist,’ ‘Sea Plane,’ ‘Loon’ and ‘Rideau’ (the latter of which is not included in the campaign finals) marked an unexpected, but welcome turn in his film career.

Based out of Florida, Gordon is repped by Mad Films in Canada. He divides his time between Canada and the u.s. as best he can, but says he always looks forward to heading north, where, last year in addition to the Ontario Tourism campaign, he also shot some work for Nike.

‘I love working in Canada because I always have such wonderful concepts to work with,’ says Gordon. He admits he is at a point in his career when he can really pick and choose his projects.

‘When you first start in commercials, you kind of take everything and anything that comes in the door. Then as you start to evolve and develop your work you start to want to get work that is concept-based and not necessarily execution-based – jobs you can add something to. It’s basically finding commercials and creative teams who are looking for a director/cameraman to come in and try to make a difference.’

In the case of Ontario Tourism, the boards – created by BBDO Canada’s Michael McLaughlin, Jack Neary, Rob Tait and Wally Krysciak (all of whom served as co-creative directors, with Tait and Krysciak handling writer and art director duties, respectively) – came to Gordon via fax at his hotel during last year’s Cannes Advertising Festival. Gordon says the campaign could not have been more appropriately timed, as he sat and watched all of the stellar, concept-driven Cannes entries.

‘And lo and behold, a blessing from the sky comes over the fax machine at the hotel,’ he says. ‘There it was – a strong concept with potentially beautiful visuals.’

Limited by few days to shoot and budget constraints, Gordon says he had some challenges to overcome when shooting the campaign, one of which was to capture the beauty of Ontario and put it on par with British Columbia. He credits the creative and Mad Films executive producer Mark Bisson, who offered strong support and made the shoot easier for the director/dop than it could have been.

Gordon is particularly fond of two of the ads – ‘Sea Plane’ and ‘Loon.’ ‘Sea Plane’ depicts a plane touching down on an Ontario lake. Within seconds of landing, arms reach out of the aircraft, holding fishing rods, casting out into the lake. The punchline – ‘In-flight meals.’

‘I thought it was very strong with an unexpected, funny payoff,’ says Gordon. ‘It has beautiful visuals with the seaplane, it’s funny and has all kinds of unusual camera angles that I like to use and a simple concept.’

‘Loon’ is the only spot in the campaign to be an individual Bessies finalist.

‘ ‘Loon’, I think, is just magic and it personifies what advertising should be about,’ he says. ‘It’s a wonderful, simple single shot and a strong payoff.’

For the ad, which depicts the tranquil side of Ontario, the idea was to shoot a decoy of a loon and use computer-generated effects in post to make the bird look as though it is real. Seeing as how wrangling loons for commercial work is not permitted, it seemed the only option.

‘We put the decoy in the water just when the sun started to come up,’ says Gordon. ‘We started moving it around and out of nowhere a real loon came swimming into the shot and stayed for 28 seconds, exactly the right amount of time, and bingo, we had it. It was like a dream.’