Canada pans out for Goldschmidt

the boards have been good to New York-based director Peter Goldschmidt, who is faring well in his new incarnation. Since trading in his entrepreneurial Peter Goldschmidt Films shingle to sign up with larger production companies (Toronto’s Radke Films in June, then New York/Los Angeles-based Gartner/Grasso in September), the angular 30ish director has been landing the kind of work the career change was designed to shove along. Like the Parliament cigarette spot for Phillip Morris out of Dentsu, Japan, which was shot in New York with Charlie Sheen.

After sampling the film wisdom of several u.s. universities, the neophyte director dove into spot production, shooting over 100 test commercials for his dad’s New York agency. While those four years were edifying, he felt it was time to chase work on which he could flex his own spot-making style. To break into the desired echelon, Goldschmidt put together a potent reel of test and spec commercials. They passed muster. One of the specs, an Air France pitch starring the photogenic Concorde, was picked up and aired by the client.

Goldschmidt says the airing of that spot generated a lot of excitement and made it a successful reel-opener. The reel pulled in interest from over 30 companies and several offers of that rare species – the guarantee – and landed him two production homes.

Since his affiliation with Radke, Goldschmidt has directed two pools in Canada, Eaton’s fall campaign for Robins Sharpe Associates and the ‘Bell Advantage’ pool out of McKim/Baker Lovick/ bbdo that’s currently airing.

The Eaton’s pool stood out with its not-too-cataloguey-kids casting and non-department store pace, framing and camera angles that firmly leave the ‘print’ perspective behind.

Goldschmidt who, like all u.s. directors, labels Canadian budgets soft and creative strong – ‘looser and more free-flowing than in the States’ – says working with art director/copywriter Peter Byrne typifies the sort of creative fusion that is so attractive.

‘Byrne writes scripts that look more like pages torn from a novel than your typical commercial storyboard… it’s a tonality, a feeling, little moments.’

Goldschmidt was most stimulated by the unusual structure of the ‘end-of-summer’ 60 they did which opened on a sunny little-girls-playing-at-the-beach scene, then cut to a group of older kids chatting amidst fall foliage, each captured in a different mode: ‘It was… unexpected. It shifts gears.’

While both show Goldschmidt’s ability to elicit good performances, the three 30s for Bell provide a counterpoint to the bopping, feel-good, lazy, hazy Eaton’s campaign. Tight, tersely edited spots that cut between sundry race footage and business folk spelling out what they expect from a communications company, the Bell pool delivers a cinematic metaphor for getting ahead in business today, aptly helmed by one who seems to have figured out the long-distance advantages.

The credit roles are as follows:

Bell Canada: dop, Paul Cameron; producer, Candace Conacher; agency producer, Marie Robertson; art director, Michael McLaughlan; copy, Stephen Creet; editor, Richard Unruh; music, ‘Pit stop,’ ‘Cyclist’- David Fleury, Roger Harris; ‘Star’ – Lou Natale

Eaton’s: dop, Greg Califano; producer, Anne Phillips; agency producer, Kathy Byrne; art direction/copy, Peter Byrne; editor, Bruce Copeman; music, The Einstein Bros.