Maxx director Dan Hackett looks extremely calm as he presides over the first of three shooting days for a new 60-second Information Technology Institute commercial. The spot is a huge undertaking for Hackett and Maxx, which is represented on set by executive producers Harve Sherman and Lisa Whittall.

On location at Toronto’s Cinespace Studios, Hackett moves from set to set (three different sets were erected for day one of the shoot), making sure everything looks right. The challenge for Hackett and dop Rene Ohashi is to ensure it looks as though the footage is shot at various locations throughout the world.

The spot takes viewers around the globe, showing how far the knowledge gained at iti can take you. The ad’s theme: anywhere you can use your laptop, you can do business.

‘We are traveling around the world without leaving Toronto,’ says Hackett. ‘It is becoming a high-tech world and it is changing the way you work, and the visuals reinforce that by showing people in phenomenal situations doing business on their laptops.’

On the first set at Cinespace, a man in street clothes (who will later be playing a Buddhist monk) is kneeling on the floor of what appears to be an Asian monastery. The actor is currently being used to help light the set – i.e. sitting very still while crew members do their jobs.

The second set is a very realistic re-creation of the top of the Rocky Mountains – or at least what one who has never been there imagines it may look like. Hackett says it will be used within the hour, as the actor depicting the climber/ business professional emerges from wardrobe.

‘We couldn’t get to the mountains, so we brought the mountains to us,’ says Hackett. ‘We will just play some tricks with the focal plains and put a little smoke on the stage.’

To enhance the picture of a mountain range being used as a backdrop, Hackett says, ‘I’m going to use a long lens so the background softens as if he [the climber] is really there. The scene should look very realistic, with the mountain climber at the top looking at his laptop. The illusion should be pretty convincing.’

The third set has already been used. It depicts a beach on a sunny day, with a woman walking on the sand in the background. In the foreground, in the sand, sits the laptop she has just been using.

In addition to the filming taking place in Cinespace, Hackett reports a second crew is busy at work for two days amassing time-lapsed footage of building lights coming on and going off, busy intersections at rush hour and the like.

‘It was more than we could shoot in three days so we added a crew. It is a pretty large extravaganza,’ he says.

The director is no stranger to large shoots. In fact, he is known for them. That is why Toronto ad agency OgilvyOne called him in for the job.

‘I do a lot of these gigantic ones,’ says Hackett. ‘I like the illusion of creating exteriors in interior situations. We’ll pull the scenes off whether we are in these locations or not.’

‘One of the best’

OgilvyOne creative director Pete McLeod says the agency has worked with Hackett before, and ‘when we dreamed up this storyboard, Dan’s was the first name that came to mind.’

‘Dan is one of the best,’ says McLeod. ‘He is one of the great visual directors in North America. He is great in anthemic, big productions with incredible sets and beautiful scenery. That is really his shtick.’

According to McLeod, the spot was designed at OgilvyOne to reflect the energy and the vision of the people who run iti and work there.

‘Any school can get you a job in information technology,’ he says, ‘but we are talking about e-business and e-business is where it is happening now and will be in the future. We wanted to capture the enormity of it and the evasiveness of it, such that you could be working on a beach or a mountain top. It’s really a sexy field to be working in this year.’

The OgilvyOne copywriter on the spot, Robin Ezerzer, says if anything, the ad should help clarify what exactly iti does and what e-business is.

‘I think there is a huge misconception about what e-business is,’ says Ezerzer. ‘When you say e-business or iti to people it can be very intimidating.’

Both Ezerzer (in the ad game two years) and McLeod (in it for two decades) are very impressed by the scale of the shoot.

‘This is one of the biggest productions I’ve been involved with in my career,’ says McLeod. ‘I’ve been at it too long to be knocked out, but I still think it’s great.’

As Hackett meets with dop Ohashi, preparing for the shot of the mountain climber, iti advertising manager Laura Jayne Hambly marvels at what is going on around her.

‘I cannot believe that from 7 a.m. to now [11:30 a.m.] they’ve created all of this,’ she says. ‘Particularly this kind of detailed work. The reality of the scenes once you see them translated onto the screen is just phenomenal.’

Hambly admits, though, she and her colleagues at iti had a few misgivings about shooting in studio.

‘We were going through the storyboards a couple of days ago and they were showing us what the scene would look like,’ says Hambly. ‘We were having a bit of a hard time conceptually visualizing how they could do a mountain scene and make it look as real as it does without shooting out West. It is really spectacular.’

As Hackett and Ohashi work on getting the shot of the mountain climber on the manmade range, Hackett indicates this is only the beginning of the trials and tribulations he and the crew have yet to face. In addition to the final Cinespace scene depicting the monastery, they still have to film scenes at an art gallery, an observatory, a lobster shack, and more.

Hackett’s only major concern about the shoot is getting the right number of shots, all with the energy to keep the ad moving and interesting.

‘The shots are all so large because I want the interiors to have impressive landscapes,’ explains Hackett. ‘The spot is talking about the world, so I want it to have scope and scale so you can see, even when I do interior shots, they are larger places and larger situations. The tough part is having enough dramatic, interesting situations for a 60-second commercial which has to be shot in three days.’

He says he and the crew will obviously have to work quickly. In total, Hackett predicts 17 different scenes will be slotted into the minute-long spot, including a day shooting at iti, where he hopes to get 15 shots alone.

‘We have a very aggressive shooting schedule and a team of people who work very quickly,’ he says confidently. Hackett is used to the big ones. That’s why they called him.