To borrow from Chapter One, paragraph one, of the Handbook of All-Purpose Cliches in a Post-Recessionary Economy: The year past has been a roller coaster ride. Except in the case of commercial production it’s been an inverted roller coaster: all the exhilaration came when the ride was going up.

Lately there’s been a lot more exhilaration. ‘When directors are stressed you know you’re doing alright,’ says Paola Lazzeri, partner and executive producer at Avion Films, in our Year in Review feature story (p. 9).

That’s a change in tone from this time last year. Then, in our year in review, Don McLean described 2001 as ‘a big moan year.’

‘The number of commercials being produced continues to shrink. The budgets for production are getting tighter. U.S. commercial productions coming to Canada for dollar savings, whether direct work from U.S. agencies or service work from U.S. production companies, has slowed dramatically since Sept. 11,’ he wrote in these pages.

If you look back on the late 2001, early 2002 issues of On The Spot – indeed on issues of just about every western newspaper – the fear of what was to come was the only story worth the ink.

Perhaps the most remarkable single outcome of the last 12 months is that almost no commercial production houses closed their doors.

So, have we seen the worst? Maybe. Some will tell you that increased board flow and Canadian directors picking up more work have highlighted the last three months. Some directors will tell you that work never even slowed down. Others, though, have a different story. In fact, every producer we speak to seems to have a different story. From what we’re seeing, the business seems to oscillate between prodcos. Navigator was busy three months ago; Radke is busy now. It’s been like that all year. We call an executive producer in August and he tells us business is picking up. We call the same exec in September and he tells us things are slow. There still doesn’t seem to be enough to carry the entire industry.

Will it come? We’re betting, yes. But certainly there’s no going back to the late 1990s. Then again, if we had to experience the last 18 months over again would we invite a return of the boom of the late 1990s?

The latter part of the decade saw an unprecedented influx of top-flight American directors; a SAG strike; and the Canuck buck begin a half-decade-long swoon from which it only just recovered. Like the share prices of the dot-coms, commercial production traveled to artificially inflated heights that it had no business attaining. And since much of it was funded by soaring American clients, who themselves were propelled off the shoulders of dot-com billionaires, it’s not surprising that when it all came crashing down, it all came crashing down. Suffice it to say, when you fall from great heights, it tends to hurt a little more.

So instead of talking about how things will never return to the way they were in the late 1990s, maybe we should turn to one another and say, ‘What the hell was that all about?’ and look forward to a return to the early 1990s, or some reasonable facsimile.

We’re reminded of the story of Icarus who flew too close to the sun and fell to his death. Except for the weather, 2002 sure was a scorcher.