There's poetry in an international producer who's afraid of flying. Though he actually likes it, Jose Silva admits it kind of terrifies him. But that fear hasn't stopped him from traveling the world on behalf of Buenos Aires agency Vegaolmosponce as the first producer of his kind.

Hired by the agency in April to expand its reach in light of increasing global briefs for clients such as Unilever (Rexona, etc.), Silva is finding the role of agency producer fits his character perfectly.

"It's a good job and I don't know why it didn't occur to me before," says 36-year-old Silva, who spent his career on the production company side. "Now that I'm here it's like, 'Yes, it's more me'."

His character is a bit shy and more of an observer. "I'm more into details and I like to see what's going on," he says, which is in contrast to his previous life as a director of smaller local projects, government work and music videos through his own production company, Kinetica. Still, his first shoot on the agency side was a bit of an adjustment. "For the first job I worked on [Axe "Crashes"], we went to Budapest and we shot with Lynn Fox," he says. "I felt kind of strange being behind the monitor and not being next to the camera."

Silva first got his taste for film as a guitarist in a "cheesy rock band" in the mid- to late-'80s. The band recorded themselves on video and Silva fashioned a makeshift editing suite out of two VCRs. By this point he'd also developed a hearty interest in photography and painting, but as a student at a bilingual high school ("very Dead Poet's Society," he says) it was all but mandated that students pursue conventional disciplines such as law, medicine or architecture. Silva did a short stint in medicine before concluding it wasn't for him.

Taking matters into his own hands, Silva decided to study film, only at the time there were no film schools in Argentina, so he took some advertising courses instead. But when Argentina's peso surged to be on par with the US dollar around 1990, the world opened up to him. With relatives in Connecticut, Silva's first stop was a video arts program at University of Hartford. Put off by the bucolic homogeneity of Connecticut ("People were all American except me and maybe one French girl"), and really just wanting to be in New York, he ended up studying film at NYU.

Upon graduation, Silva returned to Buenos Aires and began working as an AD with the production companies that had previously denied his intern requests. After several years in various prodcos, the death of his father gave Silva pause and led him to reevaluate his life. He started his company in 1998 and "mellowed out a bit".

"I got married, had my two kids and everything was fine," he says. "But then I got a bit bored." That's when Hernan Ponce, ECD of VOP called to offer him a job. "It never crossed my mind to become an agency producer, but what he proposed to me was very interesting. I thought it would be an interesting challenge to make the international department work."

While Silva jokes that his colleagues at the agency mock him for his lofty "international" title, insisting he's "just a producer", his mandate to build the department allows him to look far beyond Argentina's borders.

Roberto Carsillo, head of broadcast at VOP says, "We needed someone dedicated exclusively to this area to look for talented foreign directors and to establish contact with international production companies," adding that Silva is "easy going, responsible and never gives up."

The existence of Silva's role signals a shift in the global command of creative ideas. Where markets like Argentina were once regional centers that ambled at the foothills of mega ad centers like the US and UK, the country made creative gains in recent years, winning 25 Lions at Cannes this summer and ranking as the third most awarded country in the 2006 Gunn Report.

Still, despite top-shelf creative (Lionel Goldstein recently directed Axe "Shower") and increasing cachet, Silva says it's a bit of a tough sell to get international directors and prodcos interested in working directly with the agency. "I can imagine when they get a call or email from me it must be kind of intriguing but I can understand why they're skeptical," he says. "The goal is to have international production companies know who we are." Let's hope he knows that's going to take a lot of flying.

Strangest moment on the job.
We had to shoot several spots for a brand of soda. The script posed situations where a chimpanzee outwits celebrities and gets to drink all the soda. The atmosphere was relaxed and we grew quite fond of him. One day, out of the blue, the chimpanzee lost it and went haywire. With no hesitation the trainer grabbed a gun and shot the animal.
The commercial you remember the most from your youth.
When I was about nine, there was one selling unbreakable, drinking glasses. On TV they dropped glasses on the hard floor and they never broke. One day, my mother came home with a box full of these miracle glasses. As soon as I got one out of the box I dropped it on the floor. Needless to say I had to clean up a million tiny pieces of glass from the floor and was grounded for some time. That day, I understood many things.
The buzz word you are sick of hearing.
Obviously "obviously".
What's your nickname?
My wife calls me "grumpy".