As a 20-year-old stills photographer, Mark Mainguy traveled around the globe snapping shots of everything from the Pope in the Vatican to polar bears in the Arctic.

Believing he had gone as far as he could with his 35mm, Mainguy decided it was time to up the ante, challenge himself on a new level of difficulty, and trade in his stills camera for a spot in the director’s chair.

‘The parts of stills photography that I liked the most were very similar to what you do in tv,’ says Mainguy. ‘Someone gives you an idea and you figure out the best way to express it.’

Represented by Toronto’s Radke Films, Mainguy has been directing commercials for almost two years, and while he likes to think he gets better at it every day, he remains critical of his work and modest when it comes to describing what he d’es.

‘There is one way to describe Mark’s style and that is magical,’ says Mary Secord, senior copywriter at Grey Advertising. ‘He is very fresh, unpretentious and clean. His commercials are not complicated by a lot of stuff and the whole effect is so simpleŠit’s magical.’

Mainguy recently completed three spots for Ontario Place through Grey, which, according to Secord, were simple on paper but required real talent and vision to execute successfully.

The award-winning director says he avoids following trends and over-referencing things. ‘Because I came from a background of making images from scratch, I’ve never been into ‘Let’s make the picture look like this,’ ‘ says Mainguy. ‘Why would I use someone else’s reference for a visual technique?’

He also steers away from using technique simply for the sake of it.

‘To me there are a whole bunch of tools in the tool box and you pull out the right one to do the job,’ he says. ‘If using technique is the best way to tell a story then that is what you do, but don’t fix a bad idea with 20 filters and some flash frame.’

Upon seeing a storyboard for the first time, Mainguy d’esn’t start the process by immediately changing things, but instead tries to come up with the best way possible to bring it to life, make the ideas better, and tell the story in a way that will surprise the creative team.

However, to Mainguy, the responsibility of being a director means coming up with the best way to tell the agency’s story, and if that means a total departure from what has been drawn, ‘so be it.’

‘I just think of how it could look cool, how it could unfold, and how you could do it so that you don’t know what the whole commercial is about in the first two seconds,’ explains Mainguy. ‘It should take you someplace and make you feel something.’

While the budding director likes to make commercials with some sort of twist to them, whether it be the comedy of the spot or a plot turn, Mainguy thrives on capturing the unpredictable truth.

On a personal level, Mainguy describes himself as a somewhat goofy character with a propensity for having fun and making a fool of himself.

‘The only thing that makes me feel uncomfortable is when there is too much protocol,’ he says. ‘I like it when everyone can kind of speak their mind. I am having a blast and there is absolutely no reason why this shouldn’t be a fun job.’

His high levels of energy, along with his overwhelming desire to shake things up is apparent on set, according to Mainguy.

Mainguy picks up the stills camera when things are slow but would prefer to concentrate his efforts on getting better at what he is doing now without putting too much thought into what comes next.

‘I just like to take it as it comes and figure out how to do yesterday better tomorrow, and once I get bored, I’ll figure out what to do from there.’