That Saarinen would pursue a career in the arts is not surprising given his pedigree - his mother Lily was a sculptress, and father Eero a noted architect. He is forthright about the origin of his own creative pursuits, explaining, "[My parents] didn't really spend a lot of time with me because they were so obsessed by their work. I had very low self-esteem as a kid, but I learned pretty quickly that anything I did relating to art was good in their eyes, and in mine as well. I felt if I could find something that not only they but society would also validate and [support], then I would be happy."

Beginning his studies in painting and graphic design, Saarinen moved over to the cinema program at UCLA, where he graduated in 1969. He then worked as a cinematographer on the Academy Award-nominated short film Exploratorium and the notorious Maysles brothers film Gimmie Shelter, which documented The Rolling Stones' ill-fated free concert at Altamount Speedway.

"People were passing out jugs of wine laced with acid," he recalls of the concert. "It was red wine, which I didn't like, so I didn't drink any, but everybody else on the camera crew was seeing things." While the cameraman remembers the era as being free and expressive, of that particular event he muses, "If everything was perfect at Woodstock, Altamount was the upsidedown underbelly of nature."

Saarinen had a knack for being present with the camera running during some other of the most defining moments of the 1960s, including the assassination of Robert Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, and the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago on August 28 of that year, where police violently confronted protesters.

"I was attracted to those things," he declares. "I don't know why exactly, but the camera seemed to give some legitimacy to being there without [my] actually having to carry a placard."

If it is surprising that this counterculture cameraman has since turned his lens to cars, beer, and blue jeans, Saarinen maintains that commercials are today's cutting edge of creative expression.

"I don't want to sound pompous, but I don't look at the medium as being anything different from the commercial art the Pope and Michelangelo were talking about hundreds of years ago - it was always commercial art," he says. "And I think right now commercials are the state of the art, in terms of the ability to do anything and to go anywhere [artistically]."

Saarinen thrives on working in the ad business' wide spectrum of styles.

"It's fun one day doing [a spot with] dialog, another day doing comedy, another day doing special effects, another day doing all of those in one," he offers.

Having lensed over a dozen motion pictures, including three for comedian Albert Brooks, Saarinen is now wary of the commitment features entail. "You only have so many in you," he insists, "and if you get the wrong one, you can't give up, and you can't go away. You have to stick with it. [On a commercial] there's a lot of intensity while it's happening, but then it's over. And then, as quickly as you can revive, you get on another one."

Working with the industry's newest and best equipment is another part of the thrill. "I like fusing the digital technology with the physical, good old-fashioned filmmaking background that I have," says Saarinen, having embraced the computer as a creative, timesaving tool over a decade ago. "I would use seven or eight filters in front of my lens to do gradation, or change the color in the sky, or make parts of the scene soft. Now you can do all those things really easily in the computer, so I never shoot with a filter - I do all that stuff in post."

One ad in which digital magic played a more sophisticated role for Saarinen was BBDO New York's recent "Cross-Training with Andre Agassi" spot for Mountain Dew. A wild and woolly 45 seconds starts with the tennis star bungee jumping - first from the side of a cliff, then from a helicopter -then doing some "extreme" roller-blading through the mountains, topped off by, of course, a little sky-surfing.

While viewers might marvel at the athlete's fearlessness, it was all film trickery. "[Agassi's] favorite quote is he did all the stunts himself, but that's hogwash," the director reveals with a laugh. "He did jump out of a helicopter, but it was 10 feet off the ground, and he landed in an airbag."

To accomplish the first bungee shot, a stunt man looked into the lens before embarking on a free-fall, while Saarinen hovered above in a small helicopter, filming with a hand-held camera. Later, in a sound stage, the crew positioned Agassi in front of a blue screen and lit his face in a style similar to the stunt man's. Wires were used to tilt the actor's body over to match the initial movement, and then a digital artist, using a system from Side Effects Software, tracked Agassi's famous mug onto the first man's body.

With both studio and location setups required for each individual stunt, the spot took a whole ten days to shoot.

Not all ads have to be this death-defying to be effective. Campbell Ewald's "Bathtub" for Chevy Blazer, for example, transpires entirely in a bathroom.

An installment in Chevy's "a little security in an insecure world" campaign, the spot opens on a tub's sudsy water streaming down the drain. The camera, with a Revolution "snorkel" lens attached, pans and tracks to reveal a bar of soap at the other end of the tub starting to be carried by the current.

But before the soap gets too far, it is held back by rubber grips on the tub bottom, which, we eventually see, are in the shape of Blazers.

Saarinen wanted to convey all the action in one fluid camera movement, initially shooting hand-held. Evaluating his rushes, he determined it could be done better, and so on a second go-round employed a motion control system and shot individual passes for the drain, the path of the water, and the soap bar. The resulting ad is so successful because it demands viewers' attention to get the payoff, making its point about the safety of the sport utility vehicle with humor and an alternate frame of reference.

The director sums up his role as interpreting the story-boards ad agencies send him and "giving three dimensions to a two-dimensional idea." He stresses, however, that the images in a spot must have solid concepts behind them, and he credits the ad agencies for the ideas they generate, noting that the commercials that work "all have the guts to be well-rounded and tell a good story."