First Cut finalist Jeremy Lynch has always wanted to be a spot director.

‘I’ve no desire at all to do long form,’ he says. ‘If you want to be a long-form director and you’re doing spots I think that’s the wrong direction.’

Indeed, his career path up until now has been squarely geared towards spots. After studying photography in London, Eng., and at Ryerson Polytechnic in Toronto and a couple of years as a pa, directing work from MuchMusic, in the form of Videofact grants, gave him the opportunity to compile a professional reel.

‘I thought about commercials completely. I always shot a scene [in my music videos] that I could add to my reel. It’s a building block.

‘My style is left of left. It’s very clever, very beautiful pictures and a little je ne sais quoi – there’s something not quite right about what’s going on. There’s something about the image, there’s something in it; if you look more and more you see something behind it,’ says the Industry Films director.

To Lynch, advertising is an art form in its own right.

‘I love realism. I do like comedy but I don’t like the smack-you-in-the-face-and-here’s-the-punch-line comedy. I love advertising and really like the idea of selling a product. I want to be known as someone who pushes products.’

I would say it’s popular culture; concept art. Look at how many people are writing about it now. They don’t look at it now as bugging the shit out of [people], they’re writing about it as an entertainment and national identity.

‘There are more ways of selling a product [than before]. Like washing detergent – people are doing more and more with it. That’s what I like exploring.’

And one of these new ways of selling is on the Internet, which Lynch sees as facilitating a move to target advertising to a particular demographic.

‘Advertising has to be a little more specific for each group. I think Nike did a fantastic job with [their television/Internet campaign that involved airing an incomplete television spot and allowing users to select from five endings]. It’s a very interesting way of going about it. And I think that nailed the teenage audience.

‘The Internet is in its infancy right now. The great thing that’s going to happen is there’s going to be thousands of micro-channels, like for some Kurdistan news item, and the Internet is going to be a tv. A clever box not an idiot box. It will have to have advertising.

‘On the Internet you can really say more than on tv, there’s not so many constraints. And I think on the Net, the way advertising is going will be to find different segments of the population.

‘I don’t think you can make one advertisement for the whole of the population anymore. People are going to go after what they want to go after; you can’t be all things to all people all the time. People are going to be doing that more and more.’

This assessment is even more impressive when Lynch says access to the Internet ‘sucks right now. The pipe has to get bigger. I think it’s going to be an explosion of more and more advertising.’

His reel includes eye-popping spots for Shoppers Drug Mart’s Quo Cosmetics; Roots Canada, featuring a day in the life of snowboard champion Ross Rebagliati; and Adidas. *