Avery and Hauer were on set in Monte Carlo, shooting Kylie Minogue's Casino-esque music video "On a Night Like This." Hauer was playing a darkly mysterious role and wanted to wear a trench coat covered with aesthetically non-functional knobs. Avery knew it would conflict visually with the clean-lined look of the video.

"I said, how about wear it for one scene. In the end, we smoothed it out in flame*," says Avery of this Roy Batty moment. The rest of the two-night shoot with a sub-par local production company continued to test the director's mettle.

"Basically the DP Fredrik Callingard, the London camera assistant and I ran around and did everything," recalls Avery. "Music videos I don't board, I just sketch them out. That way I can cross stuff out and combine shots to make sure I can string the story together."

Avery has directed ads for Levi's, Nike and Heinz, as well as a stark, corporate anti-smoking "Truth" ad, and "Loafer" for EB Pilsner (see sidebar). His career began assisting famed photographers Richard Avedon, Steven Klein and Albert Watson, before photographing portraits and fashion shoots on his own. Well-versed in lighting and photography, Avery considered becoming a director of photography, but ultimately other aspirations led the New York native to prime his 16mm Bolex and without a crew, shoot and produce the 60-second short, Hitch.

Replete with angular, B&W visuals, the short depicts a muscle car enthusiast who stops to pick up an elderly female hitchhiker. The old bird steals his wheels, but...it's all a dream! He wakes up in a hotel room littered with beer bottles, the old lady cuddled up next to him. Another 60-second short, The Long Run depicts a rotund American who, in the same day, loses his job and wife. The man responds the only way that makes sense: stripping down to a revealing thong and running (quite gracefully) across several lawns before vaulting into a plastic wading pool, his worries melting away. Music is integral to each of these dialog-free narratives, with Johnny Cash, Ray Charles and El Hombres helping to highlight Avery's visual and storytelling skills. "Music and sound design are very important. Kubrick said casting is 80 percent but music and sound design are huge," says Avery. These pieces helped land Avery the task of directing videos for Irish trip-hop mogul David Holmes, a musician known for his cinematic-sounding compositions. One video, "My Mate Paul," is a B&W cops & robbers piece Avery likens to a cross between Get Carter (the original!) and Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid.

"I like dark humor and black comedy the most. The problem with a lot of humor spots I've seen in the States, the same with sitcoms, is that people think you have to brightly light comedy. Maybe this comes from silent films or vaudeville, having to see the actors' faces," guesses Avery. He references the films of David Lynch and the Coen brothers, but is also a devotee of Hitchcockian directing, carefully storyboarding each transition, effectively pre-editing his first shorts. In more recent work he has altered his working style.