Award-winning commercial director Tim Hamilton is repped by Avion Films in Toronto, The Institute in L.A. and Tomboy Films in London. Hamilton has also found success directing long form, most notably for his film Truth in Advertising, which screened at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.

After a couple seconds of intense soul-searching, I decided that I’m uniquely unqualified to write an article on The Year in Review. Why? To start, I think it’s difficult for one person to have a clear, panoramic view of what’s going on in this business. We just see what’s directly in front of us.

I think it’s particularly difficult as a director to have a wider perspective. It doesn’t take that many jobs, compared to other crew members, to make us busy. There is an equally thin line between rushing around clutching a bunch of taxi chits and morosely contemplating the intricacies of an X-Box. Interestingly (or not), I have never seen a huge correlation between how well I’m doing and how the industry seems to be doing as a whole. It’s not as if they don’t sometimes mesh, but they are just as liable to be completely at odds.

So all I really have is my limited perspective plus the usual glut of superstitions and rumors considering the health of this industry that we are all privy to.

First, my personal experience: I have to admit, with some happy guilt, that I’ve had an excellent year, my busiest ever in commercials, with some interesting long-format work as well. A lot of the work has been Canadian, but a sizable chunk has been new and repeat business from the United States and the U.K. ‘I remember seeing some creatively weak boards, reflective perhaps of clients being shook up and unwilling to take as many risks. However, in general, I had the pleasure of working on some really nice creative this year.’

Before you come at me wielding rusty proctology equipment, I’d like to point out that poetic justice will no doubt have its way with me. In fact, it already has had its way. If I had been asked to write this article a few years ago I’d have had to resort to obtuse references to ‘screenplays,’ ‘personal projects’ and ‘pitching.’ Nor am I so naive as to think that I may not at some future point be huddled in a threadbare room, inventing new swear words to properly express my career frustrations, while empty vodka bottles clack at my feet. Later, as I lick the Toblerone wrapper from yesterday’s Swiss Chalet Holiday Special, other directors will no doubt be off for cutting-edge dinners with their fabulously hip agency counterparts. I’m just hoping that it’s far enough in the future that they are having some sort of nauseating fusion of Italian and Thai.

But this brings me to my point (finally). My good fortune seems to be at odds with the glut of negative gossip I hear on the street. Maybe this discrepancy is telling in and of itself. The whole picture, so to speak, is composed of thousands of these individual pictures, many of them positive, some of them negative. So while there are general industry challenges and problems there are also a number of individual success stories that go against the grain. I also think (maybe naively) that Canadian work, both in the production and agency worlds, is holding its own in the international world.

Still, it’s hard in this industry not to be insecure. As this article attests, we are all constantly taking our own pulse to try to determine if the industry is healthy or bedridden. Producers, executive producers, DOPs, directors, agency people, all of us feel the hot, fetid breath of the hounds of career hell at our heels; nightmarish images of nine-to-five office jobs doing a devilish dance in our minds’ eyes.

I myself am always looking for ways to develop and diversify, looking for the next rock to jump on before the one I’m on sinks into the swamp.