For Matt Eastman of Toronto's Radke Films, the result has been the development of a keen eye, and his blossoming into a strong new commercials director. All those commercials formed merely a part of the commercial and film broth in which he has stewed for most of his life. A film enthusiast from a young age with a penchant for making Hi-8 projects and with family ties to the ad business, the commercial world was a natural one for Eastman and he began working at Radke during summers while at university. He began working full time for the prolific shop two years ago as a researcher. Eastman had a few spots to his credit as a director when the Five-Alive boards came his way. When you start off with a series of silly scenarios featuring off-duty mascots, and German hand puppets, where can you really go from there? If you're Eastman, you go several steps further. The boards consisted of ten mini-spots within the framework of two proper commercials. "When you're doing 10 spots, even if they're five seconds each, there is still a whole set-up and a whole universe you have to build. When I pitched it I had to come up with an idea that was sort of contained: could we shoot these all in one location." He did, with the shoot taking place over two days at a disused Toronto elementary school, with each nook and cranny of the structure exploited for the production. "We wanted to create stylized hyperreal scenarios -- celebrating the fake," says Eastman. "Part of that was budgetary, but it was a good way to go creatively, too. The idea was 'Feel Alive;' each vignette was an instructional video on how to feel alive, but taking that idea and applying this plastic gauze over it." The result is a collection of often almost imperceptible added touches that pay for themselves in extra laughs. For instance, while hot-tubbing mascots might have made a statement all by themselves, launching a football at one of their heads and having one of them banging the water with what appears to be a cricket bat moves the piece into another artistic territory. One of those details provided Eastman a bona fide director's moment. One of the vignettes involved a Greco-Roman wrestler taking on a giant box of Five-Alive, to be shot in the school, gym, natch. Some instinctual reflex, though made Eastman want to take it one step further. "I wanted to decorate the set with fake rocks, to build a gladiator-like stage for the wrestling match," he says. The client politely passed on the option. But on set, after all the requisite rock-free shots had been accounted for, Eastman shot the scene his way and when the director risked screening his version later, the result was praised by the client. "That's probably my most satisfying moment as a director -- the rocks," recalls Eastman.

Eastman has also recently shot spots for Speedy Auto Service, Cincinnati Bell and PSAs for Cystic Fibrosis, in addition to working on a documentary for a friend's clothing line, Mess. For inspiration, the young director has looked to Swedish influences like Fredrik Bond and Traktor. "A lot of the Swedish guys I love because they do this sort of absurdist comedy but it's shot in a desaturated, simple way," says Eastman, who acknowledges that while he's still developing his style he is looking beyond much of the painfully modern fare seen frequently in spots today. "Five Alive is almost a parody of all the ads out there. The other type of work I like to do is stuff that looks like it's from a '70s Hal Ashby flick rather than 21st century Wallpaper-world TV commercial land."