Daniel Benmayor wants you to know that his life is more than a series of boxes. "Most of the time I get put in the box of special effects," he says. "But I use special effects to drive the story - not just as an effect. When I do comedy, it's not just a simple laugh, it's more sophisticated comedy. Then they take you away and put you in another box."

Although the Barcelona native's European reel emphasizes more varied visual, comedy and performance work, a string of recent effects-heavy spots started receiving attention from the North American ad media. Last month, the 33-year-old was snapped up by Anonymous Content for commercial, integrated and music video rep in the US. The NYU grad with a Masters in directing has been repped by RCR at home for 10 years.

In Renault "Roadblock" for Publicis, Frankfurt, a group of jilted, old gas pumps chases the automaker's latest fuel-efficient offering. In "Shadow" for PSP, a solitary shadow races through a cityscape, jumping over buildings parkour-style and ruffling a string of annoyed pedestrians along the way. For the beautifully conceived Orange spot "In & Out", an urban landscape is subtly merged with a sterile office environment through in-camera trickery.

His breakthrough spot was "Battlefield" for PlayStation 2 for TBWA\Madrid, which picked up a Bronze Sol at the San Sebastian festival in 2005. It's got the feel of a typical Halo ad, except that it's for a tennis game and soldiers are firing tennis balls at each other.

"My interest in ads comes from when I was a kid playing around with my father's Super 8 camera," he says. "I'm also interested in feature films and so, for me, advertising is a good field to explore."

Anonymous Content http://www.anonymouscontent.com
RCR Films http://www.rcrfilms.com