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.

Too bad for Canada’s symphony orchestras. When Global Mechanic’s Bruce Alcock started directing commercials, Canada lost a future virtuoso tuba player. In the late ’80s, Alcock earned his ‘bachelor of tuba’ from the University of Toronto and had visions of horn sections and marching bands running through his head.

With degree in hand, Alcock went to Europe to continue his studies. If you were in Spain at the time, you probably could have seen the future director and his instrument silhouetted against a foggy window beneath the Barcelona moon.

In those days of horns and tapas, Alcock took a life-drawing class surrounded by the lively architechtural stylings of the inspirational province of Catalonia. Amid the siestas and sangrias, Alcock met Dirk van de Vondel, a Belgian animator living in Spain. To the dismay of tuba lovers worldwide, van de Vondel introduced Alcock to animation.

‘I apprenticed with him for a year to learn how to animate. We got to be friends and he needed help on a spot he was doing,’ recalls Alcock.

After a year apprenticing, Alcock was hooked. He returned to Canada and spent four months studying animation at Sheridan College. During this time, Alcock met Adam Shaheen and the two started Toronto commercial toonco Cuppa Coffee, which they ran together for about four years.

‘And then, Backyard Productions in Chicago offered for us to go into business with them. I was into it. Adam wasn’t so into it. So I left and went [to Chicago] to start Tricky Pictures,’ Alcock explains.

After five years in Chicago, Alcock and his wife, independent filmmaker Ann Marie Fleming, ‘wanted to be back in Canada, but in a place where the winter wasn’t too harsh.’ They decided on Vancouver, and in March 2000 launched Global Mechanic, a live-action/animation commercial production company.

With so much experience in animation, Alcock explains his move towards more live-action directing. Apparently, even in the early days, Alcock was experimenting with the natural movements of live subjects.

‘I shot some live-action stuff back with Cuppa Coffee and several jobs in Chicago,’ he says. Now, with Global Mechanic, Alcock is combining his two specialties.

‘Over the last couple of years my work’s been going more in the direction of live action/animation mixed. I can do both, so it’s nice for agencies who normally have to go to one place for each of the parts.’

Since arriving in Vancouver, Alcock has noticed a change in his directing style. Apparently the beauty of the Canadian West Coast has inspired his director’s eye. ‘I feel since coming to Vancouver my color sense has changed an awful lot,’ he says. ‘A lot of it is because of the spring here. Flowers in the trees everywhere. These crazy colors. It’s totally changed the way I’m approaching the use of color. In the last year or so, I’ve done a lot of work trying to refine my color palette and overall design sense.

‘I’m also working a lot more on working with actors and having what the actors are doing in the live-action shoot completely drive what I’m going to do compositing-wise. I’m really concentrating a lot on integrating the real world and the animated world so they are dancing together.’

The director says he is also freed up to experiment with the ever-advancing technology that ‘is finally starting to work like I like to work.’ In particular, he points to ‘new software from Discreet that integrates 3D, 2D, compositing and painting really nicely.’

Having just finished two spots for Coffee-mate Liquid out of MacLaren McCann in L.A., it is noteworthy that Global Mechanic’s jobs largely originate in the U.S. ‘We did one small job for Canada and all the rest of it is from America,’ he says.

Alcock is also hoping to crack the Asian market next year and is ‘looking for directors’ to represent. He is hunting helmers with ‘design-based work, whether it is live action, animation or whatever.’

With the aid of Fleming, Alcock also hopes to support independent filmmakers as Global Mechanic matures. ‘We’d like to bring in freelancers, students and colleagues from around the world and have a month-long, heavy-duty workshop to collaboratively put out a short film. And we’d do it every couple of years,’ he says.

For now, Alcock the spot director says he is ‘happy where I am.’

‘It’s been a great year,’ he says. ‘But I’d love to be doing – going farther.’

Still, as his visuals dance the screens, a nation mourns another silent tuba. *

-www.globalmechanic.com