Naturally enough, talk in commercial production circles tends to focus on hot new talent. Time to remember that established names have lasted in the business for many reasons.

Chief among those reasons, according to Dalton Films director Bob Canning, is the ability to offer ‘the comfort factor’ to agency personnel. He’s worked on both sides of the production street, starting as an agency art director at McKim in the early ’70s, and later moving to production as one of the owners of TDF Films until he sold his share around 1980 and moved to the u.s. Over the years, he has extended his production side contacts and built strong relationships with name dops, production house art directors and other creative contributors, putting him on the inside track when it comes to assembling the best possible talent for the job at hand.

‘People with that kind of experience aren’t afraid to bring anybody to the party,’ Canning says. ‘Every agency is looking for an edge. If I can give them that edge, with enthusiasm and experience,’ he adds, that’s his strength. He has worked with a range of feature and television dops in the u.s. and Canada, including Oliver Wood (Miami Vice, Die Hard), Guy Furner, Nick Allen-Woolfe, Gabor Tarko and Peter Hartmann. Sometimes, he calls in the services of an art director.

But in a business continually looking to the ad of tomorrow, past achievements are just that. Far from running only on his record, Canning, working with Toronto’s Dalton Films, makes it plain that if nothing else, his 25 years of experience make it easier to cope with the agency-client strictures of today. Even given the restrictions facing agencies – contracting budgets, tailoring work to research and testing results, and client conservatism – Canning says he is finding ways to take ‘meat and potatoes work and make it look like top work.’ If the reality is that only about 10% of creative is breakthrough calibre, Canning says ‘you have to try to give it a big look.’

Perhaps he draws his unflagging enthusiasm for making ad films from the rugged beauty and mannered Southern neighbors surrounding his log house in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. When at home, the Toronto native rises at dawn to take equal doses of creative adrenaline and coffee to his barn, there to carve wood before breakfast. There, too, Canning regenerates body and soul. ‘It keeps a nice, interesting perspective on the work. When you’re ready to go to (commercial) work, you approach it with a lot of vigor, the enthusiasm meter goes way up.’

Over the years, that approach has played into a lot of memorable creative: ‘The night belongs to Michelob,’ Xerox monks, Pontiac ‘Excitement’ and Cannes gold spots for the Milk Marketing Board, 7Up and Budweiser.

Pace continues

The pace has hardly slowed of late. At New Year’s he shot some nine days for J. Walter Thompson, Detroit for Ford Taurus. On that job, Canning says the client wanted him to give a new look to the film, ‘for the car in its environment.’ Able to reflect on changing style trends over the years – from the dialogue-heavy ’70s, through the rock vignettes of the early ’80s and increasing subtlety of recent years – Canning set out to develop a personality for the car without drowning the spots in technique. To achieve what the client wanted, Canning decided against having activity around the car. Instead, the people are in front, some in silhouette, ‘so you’re always reaching for the car.’

Canning says good work flows from ‘deep pre-pro,’ getting inside the creatives’ heads and finding out exactly what they mean when they say ‘red,’ what exactly they have in mind when they call for ‘funny.’ Then again, he doesn’t rule out trying the new. ‘Experimentation is the son of good planning. To make things grow, you’ve got to have a real good base. Instead of experimenting with somebody’s money…you’re going to find that planned accident that’s marvellous.’

In Toronto last month, he shot a pair of days for Leo Burnett before heading for Miami on a Mr. Goodwrench/gm project out of DMB&B, Detroit then jetting to l.a. on a Head and Shoulders job for Tatham, Chicago. He’ll be back in Canada mid-March to shoot four 30s over two days, an extension of the Lottario corner store campaign launched last fall through Padulo Integrated.