Kari Skogland sent tremors throughout the commercial production community in January when she announced a shift from solely helming spots to doing long-form work through a new association with The Partners’ Film Company.

Skogland, a one-time stalwart at Champagne Pictures, essentially tied the knot with Partners’ so her company, Skogland Films, could focus on developing and producing entertainment for television and movie theaters, or a combination of both.

‘I just felt that I want and need to do a feature at this time,’ says Skogland of her move.

More importantly, Skogland’s corporate announcement confirmed an emerging trend among Canadian commercial houses as the market for spot production continues sluggish and the unfolding multichannel universe, in particular, begins to open doors elsewhere.

Indeed, the question of whether commercial production houses should do spots, longer-form work, or a combination of both, goes to the heart of ongoing deliberations among the nine embattled partners currently dividing things up at Partners’.

Skogland says the line between commercial and feature directors is slowly but surely fading, allowing her to more easily make the crossover. She has done her homework over the last few years, writing scripts, making new contacts – looking for an avenue into features.

‘Anyone I’m dealing with, from coproduction partners to actors, will understand I’m not dabbling,’ she says of her move into longer-form work. She just completed three episodes of Catwalk, the teen series airing on ytv.

Other commercial production houses are just getting down to doing their homework, hoping to follow Skogland into the fray.

Susi Patterson, executive producer at Damast Gordon and Associates, says the Toronto-based commercial production house is taking tentative steps into longer-form work, reading scripts and sniffing out its own projects.

She says most inquiries are coming from staple ad agency clients, themselves moving into longer-form work called for in advertising today: 30-minute infomercials or multimedia projects for direct-response marketing.

dga wants to follow its ad agency clients into this new frontier.

But Patterson adds the production house will not sacrifice quality in its pursuit of longer-format work. ‘We will not do 30 minutes of garbage. Our directors are looking forward to doing a nice story, with lovely visuals.’

Multimedia similarly holds out prospects for commercial directors. An example: a car company may want to produce a compact disc on which its latest line of cars can be featured and then send it out to consumers making $100,000 a year or more, or who own a cd player.

Commercial directors would be in a position to complete just such projects.

Of course, infomercials are currently restricted to the American market, and slip across the border as part of cablecasting footprints.

But last year the crtc received a number of applications for specialty channels to feature only home shopping and/or infomercials.

The communications watchdog, viewing infomercials as a new field in broadcasting, elected to put the question aside for future consideration.

So the betting money says, in one form or another, infomercial and home shopping channels featuring full-motion pitches will likely appear on Canadian airwaves before long.

Elsewhere, Toronto-based Calibre Digital Design – where animated and live-action spots have long been the core business – is similarly opening a beachhead into longer-form work, though not formally like Skogland.

Such a move recalls Nelvana, which started out in commercial work and went on to develop its own tv and film projects. Calibre is helped by the renaissance taking place in the animation industry due to the recent successes of animated features, especially by Disney.

Neil Williamson, creative director at Calibre, says the company is close to inking a deal on a tv project. While not giving away too much, he says Calibre will be doing the animation for a production house completing an episodic series.

The project had development backing from ytv before funding from Telefilm Canada and provincial agencies was sought.

Television does seem Calibre’s preferred format. Doing animation for tv, as opposed to commercials, is very much a function of computer power, Williamson explains.

Next month, the company introduces an onyx supercomputer network on the sgi platform, positioning itself to do longer-format work, up to feature projects.

Williamson allows that doing spots is different from long-form work. ‘It’s great watching a project develop from someone’s idea, then finally coming to life.’

He also echoes a common theme among commercial directors: doing commercials and longer-form work complements either medium. ‘Our animators stay sharp, do a variety of work and bring new ideas to the process.’

Then there are commercial production houses which, while not looking to do tv or features themselves, recognize their directors need to languish from time to time amid islands of creative surprise and stimulation in longer-form work before returning to the trenches in the ad world.

Carlo Trulli, executive producer at Revolver, says directors on his roster are keen to extend themselves beyond core work in music videos and commercials.

Revolver director/dop Don Allan is working on a film, as is director Curtis Wehrfritz.

Trulli foresees many Revolver staffers looking to do documentaries, tv specials and other work as a natural extension of the artistic bent that this commercial production house is always keen to encourage.

Of course, much depends on the project when it comes to Revolver supplying financing and other production support to an in-house project or one coming from elsewhere. ‘Making a capital investment is something that we have to consider strongly. Revolver has to recover its costs,’ Trulli says.

The Directors Film Company is similarly looking to accommodate the creative whims of its directorial team in the interests of maintaining its commercial business.

Rob Quartly originally cut his directorial teeth on music videos and has been helming spots at Directors for eight years. Now he’s fielding offers for tv work, most recently from Broadway Video.

‘I would love to look back on my career in my ’70s and see that I had done commercials, tv, documentaries, drama,’ Quartly says.

He sees expanding opportunities for him and other commercial directors from the emerging multichannel universe, but is wary that increased production on new channels may lead to falling standards. ‘Anyone looking after the development of their career would want to ensure they only do good work,’ he says.

Another Directors staffer, Eliza Berry, explains the commercial production house is not focusing on long-format work but on encouraging individual directors completing their own projects. ‘Our mandate is to remain a top-notch production house, and that means supporting our people moving towards other formats.’

She specifies that support would mostly be advisory and may include production support, but would not be financial.

Berry is busily extending her own interests, having completed Three Satchels, a pilot for a children’s series produced out of Nova Scotia, and most recently Central Park, a film short.