With the Bessies upon us and the focus on the craft of making commercials, it is time for Canada’s top helmers to once again take centre stage. It is no coincidence that the names associated with many of the year’s top spots are ones we know well. They are the directors who have managed their careers for the long haul and continue to find success years after breaking in. But what are their secrets? On The Spot reporter Laura Bracken went directly to the source and asked a few of the nation’s top directors how they have sustained their long and winding careers.

Working in a variety of markets and mediums is a key element to becoming a successful commercial director, but sometimes it’s the work you don’t do that can make or break a career. Canada’s top commercial directors have to be very selective when choosing their spots in order to develop the distinctive styles that generate successful, lasting careers.

‘If a director shoots everything that comes his way, he will not develop a personality. That’s very dangerous and will shorten his career,’ says Sylvain Archambault, partner and director at Jet Films, Montreal. ‘I never regretted having refused a spot.’

One of Quebec’s busiest directors, Archambault has created an identity for himself by carefully selecting projects that allow him to draw on his storytelling skills. After 12 years as a producer, he answered his creative call and turned to directing. He got his first big directing break about nine years ago with ‘Pit Stop,’ a GM spot for the Grand Prix. More recently he directed a Canada Post spot for the 2002 Winter Olympics and a Labatt Blue spot in South Africa.

With 160 commercials now under his directing belt, Archambault only selects projects where he can bring some creative input. ‘When I pick a project, I know I’m going to have fun with it, I know I can bring something to it.’

Choosing good scripts from bad and recognizing how far he can take them is also at the heart of Imported Artists director Richard D’Alessio’s 17-year career. ‘You have to be super selective, that’s the whole key. That’s the thing that really shapes you and defines you,’ he says.

Born in New York City where he started his career directing a local cable TV comedy show when he was 19, D’Alessio has made his home in Toronto, built his career through the Canadian market and is best known for directing the first Molson’s ‘I Am Canadian’ spot.

But D’Alessio did not always intend to go into commercial directing. ‘I started out as a documentary filmmaker. I was broke, eating Raman and I needed to get a gig, so I went to an ad agency,’ he says.

Now 36, D’Alessio got his first industry break from Donny Deutsch, CEO of New York-based Deutsch Advertising, when the agency was just starting its TV division. D’Alessio says Deutsch let him go out and shoot commercials, which they would pitch to clients after they were completed. ‘So I got to do a lot of experimental stuff at the beginning,’ he explains.

D’Alessio, who for the last four years has had at least one spot air during the Superbowl, sees the response to these ads as the clearest indication of his success as a director. It offers a ‘pure reflection of how the public embraces the spot,’ he says. His ‘Cedric/Date’ spot for Budweiser was rated the number-one commercial of the 2001 Superbowl.

D’Alessio says he gets positive responses from audiences because he selects spots that have an enduring quality, rather than going with the latest trends. ‘Comedy and storytelling stand the test of time. Everything else is just a fad,’ he says.

Although selectivity may have been essential to the lengthy careers of Archambault and D’Alessio, directors trying to get noticed in today’s market may have to take a different approach.

Paola Lazzeri, executive producer and VP at Toronto’s Avion Films, says she doesn’t ‘know if [commercial directors] can maintain that way of thinking in the current climate. Some directors with a lot of experience end up reinventing themselves, which I think is the best way to do it,’ says Lazzeri.

D’Alessio agrees. ‘You have to continually reinvent yourself no matter what field you’re in, whether it’s storytelling or visual design,’ he says.

Even the best commercial directors have to respond to a slow market saturated with directors. Toronto helmer Mitch Gabourie, who was directing at Apple Box Productions before joining Navigator Films in March, stresses the importance of keeping his reel fresh. He continually works towards evolving and reinventing his style. ‘Right now my reel is almost entirely comedy dialogue and four or five years ago it was stylized, art-directed graphics and pictures.’ His national campaigns for Kodak and Time Warner were both recognized on AdCritic and he recently worked on two spots with Allard Johnson Communications, one for Canadian Management Accountants and the other for Human Resources Development Canada Youth Services, shot by James Gardner.

Gabourie, who was represented in the U.S. last year by now-defunct Conspiracy and is now represented stateside by Fifty Mile Radius, is also trying to find European representation. ‘I think you have to have representation in as many markets as possible so that you can always have that reel changing. The reel is constantly revitalized by work from different markets.’ He is also expanding his Canadian roots, having just signed with Cinelande, his first representation in Quebec.

In addition to working in different markets, working in a variety of mediums also seems to characterize the careers of Canada’s top commercial directors.

Gabourie has successfully combined his commercial career with long-form work. In 1993, he directed Shurtleff on Acting, a documentary on acting teacher Michael Shurtleff, which was picked up by PBS, CBC and Bravo! He recently directed a two-hour doc special for History Television on the history of the mob in Canada.

In addition to working in documentary film throughout his career, D’Alessio has expanded into new media, cofounding Unpulggedtv.com, a digital entertainment studio focusing on comedy, in 2000, a move that enhanced his commercial directing career by enabling him to retain greater creative control over his projects. ‘I’m much more comfortable with graphic design and now I can integrate that from a storytelling perspective,’ he says.

Archambault says he will always direct commercials, but he does plan to work in long form. ‘I have never met a [spot] director that did not want to eventually work in longer format.’ He explains that any director who is used to telling stories in 30 to 60 seconds will eventually want to explore telling a story in an hour and a half or two.

‘I’m looking at other markets,’ he says. ‘I’m represented in the States now and I want to expand into new mediums, but I want to stay in advertising until I die.’

-www.avionfilms.com

-www.navigatorfilms.co.za

-www.unpluggedtv.com

-www.jetfilm.com

-www.importedartists.com

-www.adcritic.com

–//allard.imediaco.com/we/contact.htm