Not to say that advancements on the technology front aren't impressive. Enhanced 3-D tracking software is freeing up directors to film spontaneously on shoots that will later involve digital manipulation, rather than having to meticulously measure every angle and camera move ahead of time. And better knowledge of what can be done - from color replacement during the beginning of a telecine transfer to removing unwanted items from the shot using Flame or creating entire elements with CGI - is giving directors an almost limitless range of possibilities. "Probably one of the biggest changes is the freedom with which directors can think about effects, without the restrictions they had previously," notes Industrial Light + Magic Commercial Productions (ILMCP) visual effects supervisor George Murphy. "(The technology) has freed directors to focus on the shot, directing the action and performance without worrying about technical requirements," he notes.

On the philosophical front, an aesthetic divide has developed between photo-realism and full-on fantasy. Many of today's top digital spotmakers avoid the middle ground, choosing to push the envelope of the two extremes, although most bounce back and forth from reality to fantasy, depending on the job. Ironically, a common chord struck by many of the top players in digital is an almost nostalgic respect for in-camera shooting.

"It's always been our recommendation to people that if you can get it in camera, do. We say that because, frankly, there's nothing better than capturing an image on film," says ILMCP director Steve Beck. That said, Beck's heavily layered First Union Bank spots through Publicis & Hal Riney - "Noise," "Launch" and "Cityscape" - which nabbed best visual effects honors at the '99 AICP Awards, place the director at the top of the digital spotmaking game.

Beck's near-reverence for celluloid is echoed by others in the effects arena, including the director of the new Toyota Echo campaign, Windmill Lane's Meiert Avis. "I don't like to do effects - I hate it," says Avis. "A lot of the creatives in the agencies are intrigued by in-camera stuff." Nonetheless, Saatchi & Saatchi/Los Angeles chose Avis and his Santa Monica production studio for the effects-heavy "Reverb," "Reflection" and "Echo Chamber" spots because he's known for solving tough visual problems.

In-camera stop-motion work is what Portland-based Will Vinton Studios is known for, yet director Skeets McGrew convinced client Y&R to go 100% digital for his Citibank "Bunnies" spot, winner of a 1999 AniComm Award. In many other instances, however, McGrew advocates in-camera shooting. "A lot of it has to do with style. Clay animation, for example, has a style that's hard to duplicate on a computer," he notes.

Tate & Partners director Baker Smith, at present shooting a scene in which he will later remove a too-low ceiling using Flame, says effects wizardry at shops like ILMCP and Digital Domain has created a spotmaking environment in which "if you can dream it, you can do it." Smith, director of the CGI-intensive milk "Animal Crackers" spot in which a group of animal crackers conspire to spill a little girl's milk so that she won't eat them, admits there is a downside. "I get a little concerned about the 'We'll fix it in post'attitude in film-making. I don't want to see people get lazy because of it." Smith stresses that all of the effects supervisors he's worked with claim the more you capture on film, the better the spot is going to look no matter how many post processes it goes through.