Generator Films director Zach Math has received a lot of attention in this, his first full year as a commercial director. In addition to being a finalist at this year’s Saatchi & Saatchi/Playback First Cut Awards, he placed two spots, ‘Nerd Club’ and ‘Tiny Sparrow of Love,’ among this year’s 10 Top Spots. It was his work on ‘Tiny Sparrow’ that garnered him the highest grade among directors in this year’s competition.

Math’s campy brand of humor shines through in ‘Tiny Sparrow,’ a 60-second spot for the Sugar Mountain Confectionery Co. While giving a kitschy nod to Japanese culture, the spot tells the story of a very fake-looking red sparrow that delivers a candy from a young man in North America back home to his girlfriend overseas.

Math went to great lengths to make sure the job was handled correctly despite the low budget. He appreciated the creative from Ian Letts and Michael Gelfand (now at Ogilvy & Mather) as well as the client’s openness to his ideas.

‘Sugar Mountain is a very creative store,’ says Math. ‘It has a lot of wacky and kooky ideas. It was a natural progression for me to instill some of my bizarro sense of humor, which is an extension of what Sugar Mountain wants to express and be associated with. It wasn’t a spot that was about showing a product for 15 seconds. It was about doing something cool, and by association the product would be that.’

Math was so intrigued by the project that to ensure it would get made he took a pay cut, as did Toronto design and post shop TOPIX. Math put in a good deal of overtime with TOPIX inferno artist Dominik Bochenski working out the complicated backgrounds and F/X, including a breathtaking pullback from the window of the young man’s apartment to a wide aerial shot of the city.

‘The spot has very clean art direction, [set] in an out-there fantasy world, but at the same time there is a sort of homage to Japanese cinema that I really liked, and a bit of Eastern pacing to the whole thing,’ Math says. ‘It was more cinematic than flashy. That was the approach I took, to make it almost like a short film.’

Math’s Nerd Club, originally created as a spot for dentist Dr. Vladimir Pavezka but now airing as an ID for The Movie Network, is a spoof of the feature Fight Club, shot on a budget of only $5,000. Although the ad finished one spot ahead of ‘Tiny Sparrow’ in the overall Top Spots judging, Math hopes the latter commercial and the recent Shark Week cinema ad he shot for Discovery Channel will serve as a good indication of his directorial range heading into his sophomore year.

‘It will be cool if people look at [those two spots] and say, ‘He can do comedy that is wacky and out there, but he can also do cinema or dramatic ads that have a dark element to them,’ ‘ he says. ‘Being labeled can help you out in the short term and it can be a good business move, but in the long term I think it is important to develop and be known as someone who has really good creative solutions on the production end.’

In today’s highly competitive commercial market, a first-year director having the kind of success Math has enjoyed is nearly unheard of, but he remains humble.

‘When you are working with good people, it makes any experience a little richer and fuller,’ he says. ‘I’ve been able to work with good people on the agency and production sides, people who have wanted to make sure I’m nurtured and have the right support system around me, so it has been very positive.’

-www.generatorfilms.com