Who would have thought? Canadian spot-makers may have the solution for the age-old Canadian stressor – keeping our country united. Bernard Landry must be rolling around his summer home, taking out the woodshed with a croquet mallet.

For the sixth straight year, the Toronto International Film Festival Group has shouted into the canyon and come up with an Echo. Toronto-based Echo Advertising + Marketing is spearheading the pro bono (as in free, not in support of U2) campaign for TIFF, which runs Sept. 6-15. Supported, also pro bono, by Hoodoo Films and other volunteer services, Echo produced a teaser trailer to promote the festival and a master cinema trailer to run before all the festival films.

With an eye to make proprietary films targeted at the U.S. marketplace, producer Steve Hoban, distribution maven Noah Segal and commercial production executive Philip Mellows have teamed up to create a new feature film production company – 49th Parallel.
49th Parallel [Canada-U.S. border] ‘is, for some people, an ‘unclimbable’ mountain. For us, it’s an invisible line,’ says Segal, who left his position as exec VP worldwide marketing at Lions Gate Films in early August to start up the new Toronto house, which plans to release three features a year.

Saskatchewan – it’s home to the Green Riders, the mystic prairie and Bill Stampe, commercial director and owner of Cinepost Films. What are the challenges that face a commercial director working in Saskatoon, outside Canada’s major markets? The veteran spot director shares his insights.

With the increasingly powerful state of computer hardware and the many new software features designed to take advantage of that power, the main themes at SIGGRAPH 2001 in Los Angeles included service, support and work-flow streamlining.
At the five-day conference, held in August at the L.A. Convention Centre, software manufacturers imparted ways to make producers’ lives easier and more efficient, while students and producers marveled at the new systems, taking tutorials on-the-spot and attempting to apply the new capabilities to their work-flow challenges.

Zach Math has an equation for you. Take three parts training, one part experience and multiply by confidence and humility, plus one. The results are not in the back of a textbook. They’re listed on the commercial reel of a young Canadian director making waves less than a year into his career in the spot business.

* Director/writer: Bill Phillips * Producers: Helen du Toit, Mehra Meh * Cinematographer: John Holosko * Diary by: Dave Lazar

DKP’s Dan Krech and director/cinematographer Derek VanLint have been working together, on and off, for 15 years. Various spot projects and a collaboration with Derek VanLint and Associates in Miami in the 1980s cemented a working relationship that finally blossomed at the beginning of July. The bloom, ‘Ello Luv, is an integrated commercial production and animation/effects company designed to streamline and simplify the spot making process.

ACOMPLISHED feature film director Deepa Mehta recently completed her first commercial directing job, a three-spot campaign for United Way through her commercial representative, Circle Productions, Toronto.

GORD McWatters lives in the ‘best of both worlds.’ The Spy Films spot helmer is also the creative director for Space: The Imagination Station and the soon-to-be-launched Drive-In Channel. For him, the balance of Spy jobs and full-time work within the ChumCity empire is the perfect blend.

IN June, The Shooting Gallery, a large New York commercial and long-form production house in business since 1991, informed its employees it could no longer continue to meet company payroll. The shop’s closing has had spin-off effects on the Canadian spot landscape, precipitating the closing of The Shooting Gallery’s Canadian roadhouse business Gun for Hire in both Toronto and Vancouver.

Radke Films’ Matt Eastman is one up-and-coming helmer with great hope for the future of the business in Canada and the young directors within it. Eastman, who has been directing for just over a year, has already succeeded in gaining the industry’s attention and the respect of his peers. Now he’s added the Playback/Saatchi & Saatchi 2001 First Cut Awards to his list.