The latest batch of spots for Christie Brown’s brand Crispers challenges the stereotype of the client as conservative and inflexible.

Doug Miller, vp marketing at Christie Brown, had the chutzpah to put the Crispers production budget into the hands of four completely inexperienced directors, sending them out on the street to follow up the ‘Is it a chip or a cracker?’ campaign.

The four spots, which will go to air shortly, are receiving kudos from both the agency, Harrod & Mirlin, and the Nabisco brand Crispers team.

Directors for hire are Burt Bulmer, Wayne Craig, Stephen Markle and Martin Markle, all sourced for the agency through freelance production manager Troy Woodworth. Also deserving of mention are cameraman Anton VanRooyen, The Daily Post editor Chris VanDyke, and Producer’s Choice sound designer, Steve Hurej.

Cactus commotion

Quietly nestled in the heart of Vancouver, Cactus Productions came out big time in June, winning two 30-second spots for the highly acclaimed computer-animated television series ReBoot, and the Laugh! Chance competition which will see it producing a series pilot to air on u.tv this fall.

The ReBoot spots, directed by Cactus’s James Head, will be a combination of live action and animation by the ReBoot team. There’s no agency onside. Head and Cactus executive producer Scott Kennedy will work directly with ReBoot producer Christopher Brough (president of Vancouver’s BLT Productions, coproducer of the series with Toronto-based Alliance Communications) on the commercials, which will advertise ReBoot action figures for Irwin Toys.

While the ReBoot project gets off the ground, Head and Kennedy will be putting together the pilot for Channel 92, their winning entry in the Laugh! Chance competition, sponsored by British Columbia Film and u.tv. The pilot, about the comical changes that occur when an all-male tv station goes belly-up and becomes all-female programming, is being coproduced by u.tv and broadcast in primetime. Heck of a summerÉ

Waltonesque

After just a couple of weeks in the Apple Box Productions stable, director Mark Walton is already in the midst of one of his signature video pitches for an undisclosed campaign.

Walton, who recently left Radke Films in Toronto and The Ace Film Company in Vancouver in favor of international representation through Apple Box, says it’s sometimes difficult to juggle the politics of two production houses and that being represented by one is simply easier.

Apple Box expressed the willingness to back the video pitches that can run upwards of a couple of thousand dollars, but which have already clinched the job for Walton twice, once for AGT Yellow Pages through bbdo, Calgary, and again for a federal government project for homeless kids.

But the real attraction was Apple Box’s relationship with itv, an affiliate of WIC Western International Communications, which owns 100% of the company. Commercials will continue to be the focus, but the lure of a feature film was too attractive to walk away from, says Walton. Action pictures are out, but emotional movies with powerful character development are definitely in.

New faces

U.S. directors Skip D’Amico and Piers Plowden are now repped in Canada by Karen Silver and Susie Neill at The Artists Company. D’Amico was the head of production at tbwa in New York. Plowden has just been awarded a spot for the Mercedes E Class ’96 (no agency) after completing that attention-grabbing spot for The Hummer, the off-road vehicle that travels under the snow in the commercial, for AM General through The Richards Group in Dallas.

– True to its spirit of expanding internationally, Spy Films has signed 21-year-old Javier Aguilera, a Mexican-based director/editor. After three years with IV1/2, Mexico, the young director has six music videos and two commercials on his reel, as well as a short film and documentary showing in student film festivals in Latin America and Spain.