The Park City Film Company has nabbed one of Apple Box Productions’ top directors, Randy Diplock, who joins the company as a partner. Park City principals J.J. Lyons, Clare ‘Cash’ Cashman and Jane Charles-Shaw say Diplock will help take the shop in new directions.

‘All of us have worked with Randy before and love working with him,’ says Shaw from Park City’s Vancouver office. ‘He’s going to be a big part in shaping who we are and how we’re presented to the world.’

A recipient of the Saatchi & Saatchi/Playback First Cut Award in 2000, Diplock’s success has grown steadily in his four years as a director and his work and reputation stand to heighten Park City’s presence in the market, adding to the shop’s credibility. ‘We’re in business to do business and Randy has been very successful… It’s like signing a Wayne Gretsky,’ says Lyons.

Diplock left Apple Box after four years to join Park City in mid-December. With six months remaining on his contract, he says he did not consider leaving Apple Box in June last year when Shaw, Cashman and Lyons did so to form their own company with offices in Toronto and Vancouver.

For Diplock, the move will give him the freedom he needs to further enhance his directing skills. ‘When you want to get better it means not only getting better boards, it means turning down some of the stuff that you would have done ordinarily,’ says Diplock. ‘In that way it is going to bump up the level of my work. I feel like I’ve come a long way since I started, but I still feel I can do a lot better and get to that upper echelon.’

Part of expanding his breadth as a director will include securing more international work. ‘From our point of view we definitely want to get a higher level of work for [Diplock],’ says Cashman.

In addition to developing his skills as a director, Diplock says the move will also allow him to expand more into the creative side of commercial production, something his new partners say will enhance the company as a whole.

‘As a company we’ll be going after creative teams that we work with very collaboratively, the teams we know and have trust with, so that [Diplock] can work more as part of a team, rather than just a director sending a reel in,’ says Shaw.

Diplock’s previous experience in the industry makes him well-suited to working collaboratively with creative teams. Before moving to directing, Diplock worked for more than 20 years on the agency side as a writer for agencies including MacLaren McCann, BBDO and TBWA/Chiat/Day and as an art director at Chiat and J. Walter Thompson.

‘[Diplock] understands advertising and marketing, he knows what they’ve gone through to get to where they are, so he’s going to help them make what they have better, not take it and change everything they’ve already approved,’ says Shaw. ‘He’ll take what they give him to another level.’