Based on the 1964 children’s book by Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy is the story of an 11-year-old girl aspiring to be a writer. Acting on the advice of her nanny, who says to be a writer one must first learn about life by seeing the world and writing it all down, Harriet begins spying on her eccentric neighbors. But she gets caught and her world begins to crumble, teaching her some valuable lessons about life and growing up.

‘It’s a film about the birth of an artist, and really, she’s doing what I’m doing,’ says first-time feature film director Bronwen Hughes. ‘Harriet is learning and practising what she wants to do, in her case writing, in my case making films.’

Hughes spent nine years directing at commercial production houses, including Partners’ and The Artists Company. But her break into features came after she did the last eight film shorts for Kids In The Hall and Hollywood agents came calling.

‘It was the first thing I had done that Hollywood paid attention to,’ explains Hughes, who says being a commercial director can be more of a hindrance than a help when trying to break onto the l.a. feature scene. ‘Some people advise that you don’t admit to coming from commercials because there are a couple of black marks in commercial directors making this transition of late.’

But after the initial notice from Hollywood’s studio system, the commercials on her reel gave her an advantage, she says. ‘They proved to the studios (Harriet the Spy is a Paramount film in coproduction with Nickelodeon) that I had the hipness to make the film modern. So it really nailed this project for me to have the commercials as well. The Nickelodeon people told me they proved I could give something – the edge that comes from working with commercials and music videos.’

With post just wrapped on Harriet the Spy, Hughes says the skills she gained in commercial production were invaluable on the set of a Hollywood picture, especially in dealing with the long line of studio executives.

‘You wouldn’t believe the studio’s power. Every day I had to sell something – I had to sell why I needed this particular cast member to the studio head, I had to sell why I needed this particular piece of gear to the production manager,’ says Hughes. In commercial work she was used to dealing with many department heads and answering to ad agencies, which she calls ‘microversions of the studio.’

Working with high-end technology at commercial production houses gave Hughes an additional advantage. ‘Having so much commercial experience with motion control, blue screen, all kinds of remote heads, digital finish, compositing, that when I got to the feature I wasn’t fumbling around,’ she says. ‘You know exactly what you need, you know how to get there and you know how much time it will take. That’s why commercials are a great training ground.’

But commercials couldn’t prepare Hughes for the responsibilities that come with directing a major studio feature.

‘In a commercial you focus on each individual aspect and work things to perfection, but in a feature the minute detail has to take a back seat to the bigger picture – performance, story, schedule, whatever.’

‘The stress level on the feature is beyond anything I had ever imagined,’ adds Hughes. ‘There is $20 million riding on it and every day there is a crisis. There are so many more factors in a feature that have to be juggled and traded. We always had too much to do and it was up to the director to make it happen. You have to eat it if it doesn’t work out.’

Hughes also found a big difference between editing for the small and big screen.

‘In commercials, you are constantly stripping things away and making them the essence,’ explains Hughes. ‘But cutting this film I learned that sometimes you can trim things so short you sap the emotion out of it. When you’re with an audience for two hours you have to take them on an emotional ride, and sometimes you have to linger with a character or a moment to get the emotion out of it.