Established commercial directors are the subject of this regular feature. Each issue we will profile their careers, accomplishments and the ideas that propel them to new advertising heights.

Montreal: Voodoo Arts’ Jim Donovan lived in Los Angeles when he was a boy. There, he was a frequent visitor to the Universal Studios theme park. Now a Montrealer, Donovan believes these experiences in La-La-land prompted his interest in becoming a film director.

‘You can’t help it,’ Donovan begins. ‘You take that tour enough times, you see the mechanical shark enough times and you start to wonder, ‘Gee, maybe I could do this.’ ‘

At the age of 10, Donovan began to make Super 8 films with his kid brother. When he and his family moved to Montreal shortly thereafter, Donovan’s interest in filmmaking did not wane. He attended Concordia’s Film Studies program.

‘Three summers later I’m looking for a summer job and I couldn’t get hired as a PA because you had to be a union member. So I finally went to a local TV station in Quebec City. I didn’t know where else to go,’ Donovan explains.

There, Donovan cut his teeth rerecording voice-overs, and changing supers on ‘some old commercials.’ His time in Quebec City lasted but two years before the bright lights and smoked meats of Montreal lured him back to the island.

Donovan got work with the TVA Network doing on-air promos. ‘I was directing then, right off the bat,’ he says. Although Donovan enjoyed this experience immensely, he still was missing a connection to his first love. ‘I wanted to shoot film. And, at that point, it was still television. And I was always shooting in the film style.’ After two or three years at TVA, Donovan took matters into his own hands. ‘I started on the weekends. I’d sneak off and shoot a music video. Or I’d make an experimental short.’

After a while, Donovan ‘just couldn’t hack it anymore’ and decided he was ‘diving into the freelance world of film and music videos.’ Donovan was successful in attracting more than 20 music videos from Quebec artists. It didn’t take long for the commercial world to take notice of the young director’s productivity.

‘After a while I got snatched up by a good buddy – Pierre Fyfe. He was at a shop called SWAT Films, which is related to La Fabrique d’Images. And so I went into that family and started shooting. Now, all of a sudden, there were agencies and there were commercials.’

In his five years at SWAT, Donovan shot award-winning spots for Saturn, Molson Dry and Labatt Ice. ‘I’m actually somewhat of a beer specialist,’ he says.

It was during this time that Donovan got his first crack at directing a feature. Like so much in life, the opportunity did not arrive as imagined.

Donovan explains: ‘Around 1997 or 1998 I had an opportunity to shoot a feature film. Someone had seen my reel and had heard about me through an actor friend of mine and they were coming to town to shoot a spy film. So I was thinking I was going to do some grunge independent first feature. And then, all of a sudden, out of left field comes this six-million-point-something-dollar special. It was incredible.’

Learning was not the only thing Donovan got out of his first feature film experience. He also gained membership in the Directors Guild of Canada – which, in turn, led the young director into series work. Donovan began directing episodic kids shows such as Are You Afraid of the Dark?

This long-form action did not make Donovan want to leave the commercial world, it simply presented him with more options.

‘There were times when I was on episodic television and a commercial would roll around and I would turn down an episode or two to go and shoot a commercial,’ he says. ‘To me it’s all about the most interesting project. The best ideas, the most fun. Where can I learn the most and have the best experience?’

In 2000, Donovan left SWAT to join the roster at Voodoo. He explains the transition: ‘Rick [Ostiguy] and I started working together at Buzz – he was also working with the Fabrique Group and that’s where I met him. And then eventually he started his shop [Voodoo]. And we started talking. It took a year or two until I thought the timing was right.’

Donovan’s journey to Voodoo was prompted by a desire to be with ‘a smaller shop.’ He was also excited ‘to get to know the animators much better.’ In fact, the Voodoo animators give Donovan regular tutorials on the animation software packages, thus expanding the ambitious director’s skill set.

Currently Donovan is directing an animation-heavy spot for Presidente Beer out of the Dominican Republic and is having fun with the work for Latin America, where he says it’s ‘a whole other ball game.’

In terms of directing style, Donovan is increasingly passionate about working with actors and feels his varied background gives him an edge.

Says the director: ‘One project helps the others. If you’ve learned to work with actors for an extended period of time on longer texts and more complex emotions, they’ll feel it when you walk on a set to do a commercial. They’ll know by the language you use, by how you treat them, by how you set up the day that you’ve been around actors.

‘I’m more interested in the acting now than ever before. For 14 years I’ve been learning how to make things look pretty and now it’s more complex than that.’

Donovan, who is always developing feature projects, also does scratch video [live video mixing] at raves and events. He loves the ‘instantaneous’ nature of his experiments with scratch video. Above all, it provides him with what he calls fabulous ‘accidents.’

‘There aren’t enough accidents in commercials or even music video,’ he says. ‘Too many thoughts, too many plans, and the spontaneity gets lost. This is also why I like working with actors. It’s more free form. Actors come up with things you never imagined.’

Donovan has a suggestion to help the frequent directors’ complaint of being categorized or pigeonholed. He feels commercial reels shouldn’t necessarily be limited to commercials. ‘There are things that we can do that come from other influences that can be used in advertising,’ he states.

‘I would love to try and create a reel that wasn’t just six or seven good-looking spots. I would have three or four good ones and three or four other things that people could see. On my reel you see a lot of beer, a lot of youth advertising, a lot of high energy and a lot of special effects. And that tends to be what I get called to do.’

Donovan concludes on a mournful note about the isolation sometimes felt by Quebec spot shooters. ‘I’d like to see more Montreal directors work in Toronto. I’ve shot one or two jobs in Toronto and a few in Vancouver. But I would love to feel more Canadian.’ *