Whether making "stupid little films" with pal Garth Jennings while in art school, mentoring under Radiohead-approved filmmaker Grant Gee or furthering his education with visits to Academy alumnus Jonathan Glazer's shoots, Nick Gordon's career has been blessed with access to some of the industry's finest talent.

And as his own impressive commercial reel implies, the Johannesburg-born Gordon has made the very most of those opportunities over the years, quietly turning out a body of work that ranges from visceral and visual (Sony PlayStation's woozy "Pace Of Life") to left-of-center (the bubblegum-bubble-out-of-the-ear conceit of Honda's "Dreams") to script-driven (the clever 'meet cute' of Levi's "Bike").

While he's putting wraps on a new spot for T-Mobile and an as-yet-untitled short, Gordon's also coming off a career highlight - a recent stunner for Nokia. Shot in Toronto with his local prodco Corner Store on an elaborately constructed set, "Fame" communicates the concept of second nature via subtle color cues amid a grand old Hollywood-type set. We recently caught up with the 36-year-old and asked him about everything from what his favorite directors have taught him to the experience of shooting that ambitious Nokia spot.

When I was a really young kid, I saw Star Wars like seven times. I didn't really understand the difference between film and real life because I was too young, but there was this thing in the back of my mind that knew that's where I wanted to be. I studied sculpture at art school but while I was doing that, I was actually working with Hammer & Tongs. I went to college with them, and me and Garth used to make stupid little films.

When I left college, I worked for Grant Gee, who did the Radiohead [doc] Meeting People Is Easy. I used to be his little gopher boy. He was working on visuals for videos at the time, so I got exposed to music videos. At the same time I was still making shorts with Garth and gradually getting a showreel together. A few years after that I got my first video and it kind of snowballed from there. I signed with Academy [in 2000] on the strength of four or five videos and they put me into commercials.

In advertising you have to know what your strengths are. You'll often be involved in a project where you're not on the same page as the agency and the client. You have to be honest about who you are as a director and know whether you can actually add something. When you don't know what your strengths are, you think you can do everything and that's not constructive. Academy nurtured me through that discovery process.

Just seeing the way Jonathan Glazer works... he's that guy who leaves no stone unturned. Once he commits to a project, he goes into it so deep; he'll fight and fight until he finds something amazing. He also won't get involved in a project unless he knows it's going to be amazing, and that's totally inspiring.

The Nokia spot is one of those difficult advertising ideas. Sometimes when you get an ad you see the final line and it all makes sense. But second nature is a kind of intellectual concept rather than something you do; it's not a way of being. That makes it kind of hard to explain. One of the best things [about the shoot] was designing the set with Sue Tebbutt, who works with Floria Sigismondi. I've worked with her quite a lot over the years. It was like a schooling in old Hollywood techniques... I just began to understand more about what that craft was. Also, we could have [created the sets] in post, but we decided to use these huge backdrops that, in some cases, were 200 feet long and 70 to 80 feet high. We had a backdrop painter painting these scenes and I loved watching how they did it, how he'd spray them out of focus. To me, it was completely inspiring to color code and design a set so that you'd just be focused on somebody's shoelaces or something.

The future? I'm not a technological mastermind so I don't know what it holds, but I know we still need good stories whether it's in virals or broadcasting on mobile phones or films or HBO. People are always going to be hungry for that.

Academy Films http://www.academyfilms.com
Corner Store http://www.thecornerstore.tv