James Rouse the Creative would've been a dream creative for James Rouse the Director. In only four years, his directing career has flourished thanks to the kind of hands-off, open-concept scripts that allow a lot of creative leeway.

"I was much more superficial as a creative," he says over the phone from his home in London. "I don't think I thought that hard about it. I just did a few good gags and maybe I let the director deal with it from there."

After graduating from the School of Communication Arts in Edinburgh, he began his ad career on the agency side as a creative for London agencies such as TBWA, BMP DDB and Euro RSCG Wnek Gosper. In 2003, he signed with Outsider and scored a hit on his first directorial job, "Trojan Games," in which athletes turn screwing into a competitive sport. The virals earned him a spot at Saatchi & Saatchi's New Directors Showcase at Cannes a year later.

He's since earned a reputation as a copious researcher, who writes highly thorough treatments and character histories and says he focuses on performance more than anything else. Two of his most successful virals - "Fashion Show" for Remington and "Ravenstoke" for Lynx, both with The Viral Factory - were improvised with many non-professional actors using little besides "a concept and an attitude."

Like "Trojan Games," both spots relied on a deadpan, Spinal Tap -style tone and were released online with brand names and logos playing supporting roles. "Fashion Show" spoofed Fashion Television, following imaginary designer Stephane Monzon as he presides over a group of models with elaborately styled pubic hair. "Ravenstoke" was a faux TV news clip about hard-luck Alaskan men who spray their town with 'scent' in order to attract more statuesque women.

Lately, the 37-year-old has moved into more filmic territory, with an Oxfam campaign that cast Peruvian alpacas as models and a horror-sci-fi cinema spot for Toyota Scion called "Surgery," in which a Romanian doctor molds human skulls into cubes.

I cut my teeth on virals. You have to be very aware of your audience because if you don't give the audience something they want, it just won't work. Your viral just won't be viral. Clients, in particular, still think the viral medium is a way to preach the way traditional advertising does. Viral is all about understanding what your audience wants and giving something back.

Especially with web content, the sands are shifting all the time. Things that worked last year aren't working this year. The quick gag of someone's head exploding isn't good enough anymore. The influence of new media and YouTube is a very good thing. It puts the pressure on all of us to think about the audience a little more.

I consider myself a director who focuses much more on performance. [The Scion spot] was meant to be very dark and we worked a lot on how to evolve the characters. I did a workshop in the UK beforehand with actors. It could've ended up being very cartoon-y, but I wanted to give some depth to the characters. We worked on video diaries - what the characters' histories were and why they wanted to do what they did. Then I took that to Romania with me because we cast it in Romania. I did video diaries of their characters with the Romanian actors. All the video diaries are in Romanian and my Romanian is a bit sketchy so I have no idea what they said. I can tell a real performance when I see it, it doesn't matter if I can't understand the language.