Production affiliations: UK - Stark Films / US - Sandy Mollod
Years directing: 6
Shoot days in 2001: 32
Geography: British, based in London
Favorite spot: Carling "Cracking"
Started shooting at age: 9
Ratio of scripts pitched to scripts received: 3/10

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Catching up with top UK comedy dialog carver Colin Gregg wasn't easy, but we did squeeze in a chat following a three-spot jaunt to Hong Kong.

The Far East expedition yielded a crouching tiger take on Grolsch beer for Leith London and a pair of spots for British Telecom's broadband Internet service, Open World, for AMV.BBDO.

"The stuff I do tends to be performance-based, hopefully kind of ironic, humorous and quite natural," says Gregg, a self-taught filmmaker who was running around the Devonshire countryside with an 8mm camera at age nine.

Gregg and producer Greg Jordan are selective, bidding on only two or three out of every 10 scripts that are offered. Gregg says he just tries to, "reflect the spirit of the words of the piece because the good scripts have been written with a good ear."

The first of the new BT spots features Ellen MacArthur, a round-the-world solo yachtswomen, e-mailing her parents; the second eavesdrops on young lovers linked via Web cam. She listens from a cyber café in Hong Kong as he sings to her from his cramped London apartment.

"It's very touching. She cries - really nice performances. Quite often there seems to be a kind of acting for commercials that I never like. Maybe because I come from a drama background."

Gregg worked his way through low-budget features and British television dramas for 14 years before making the jump to commercials in 1996.

He says the multi award-winning Black Currant Tango spot for HHCL was his first success: "It still epitomizes everything that I think [commercial] work can be in an ideal situation. A bit of cinematic scope, dry witty and ironic writing, and well-performed."

Gregg's passion for convincing performances paid off while shooting for Ikea in a dodgy part of Glasgow. He had cast a hulking local non-actor whom Gregg says, "had a very difficult, shady past. But when things got tricky, this guy could step in before trouble started, because the local troublemakers knew who he was and backed off."

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