Aviator Pictures director Cliff Skelton spent many a summer night sitting in front of his television fast-forwarding through some classic black-and-white science-fiction b movies from the 1950s trying to pick up on how to achieve that dated and unprofessional look for his latest spots for Vancouver’s Pacific National Exhibition.

The four spots, through Palmer Jarvis, Vancouver, were shot in one day on the grounds of the pne and in a big arena-type building on what Skelton refers to as a sh’estring budget.

However for Skelton, putting things together with minimal money is nothing new, his music video background has prepared him well to work under impecunious circumstances.

But according to the Vancouver director it was a fair tradeoff as what they lacked in funding on the pne shoot was made up for in creative freedom.

The original boards were really basic, just three storyboards with little stickmen and the words, ‘Little green men spotted,’ says Skelton. ‘We were able to inject a lot of our own ideas and that was a lot of fun.’

The 15-second b&w spots, like the low-budget films which inspired them, feature three-point lighting, a very flat basic look and a lot of little mistakes.

‘You can tell when they were making these movies they were just running through and hitting this set and hitting that set and that is basically what we did,’ says Skelton. ‘A few takes and then move on.’

Packed with bumpy camera moves, dollying and out-of-synch voices that don’t match the person speaking, all the mistakes on this shoot were deliberate.

And since there was a lot of room for slip-ups on the shoot itself, the only real challenge came with getting the set together to establish the look they wanted and trying to coordinate their activities with the people at the pne.

‘The pne is a Crown corporation so there are a lot of different departments and it was really hard to lock them down on when we were going to get this or that because everything would always be referred to the next department,’ says the director.

The bureaucratic roadblocks were detoured and the confident director says the spots came out exactly as he envisioned them, which according to him happens more often than not.

‘It always comes in just where I wanted it to be or better,’ he says. ‘I have a very specific idea and I know in detail exactly what I want so to hit it or exceed it is not that uncommon.’

dop on the spots was Steve Cosens, executive producer was Jason Hunt, Paddy Gillen was the producer and Skelton edited. Sound design was handled by KOKO Productions.

Palmer Jarvis personnel included art director Jan Trudel, writer Mark Stoiber and agency producer Cynthia Roders.