It's probably rare (or perhaps we're simply not privy to it) that alcohol has played such an important role in the early career of a director as in that of 40-year-old Brett Foraker. A native of Orange County, California, he moved to London to follow his wife in the late '90s, falling into freelancing as a creative at various broadcasters including Cartoon Network and TCM, where he got his first behind the camera experience.

"One day our director had been on the piss the night before and he didn't turn up for the shoot," he recalls. "So I was left sitting there with 40 people looking at me wondering what to do."

While his first shot at directing was helped by a dash of alcoholic serendipity, his continuing success has been entirely on merit. Headhunted to helm Channel 4's creative department (mantra: "Do it first; make trouble, inspire change"), his creative and directing duties on the channel's edgy live action/CG rebrand idents in 2004 earned him international plaudits, and saw him sign to RSA in 2005, while retaining his Channel 4 role. First off the bat was a spot for Sony Walkman, written by the then-almost-unknown Fallon creative Juan Cabral. Deceptively simple yet beautiful, it exemplifies his oeuvre: atmospheric, sometimes to the point of eerie, and stunningly crafted with impeccable attention to detail.

"I'm always looking for a striking image to hang everything off," he muses, "a unique moment or visual that will cut through all the other shit you're forced to watch." Foraker accentuates it all with a holistic process: "Tone is often overlooked, and there's a lot you can do with sound design in terms of framing things."

He's gone on to flex his directorial muscle across the board, equally at home with deftly clever in-camera visual trickery for VW ("Clever Use of Space") and Virgin Atlantic ("Premium Economy") as he is with breathtaking, brooding visual work for Hiscox (See On Location, page 18) or treading the line between art piece and ad with the striking "Lasers" for Sony Blu-Ray. That strong aesthetic sense derives from an early career path as a painter in his Orange County hometown. "You start looking at an isolated monitor, and when you have a camera up, you realize how close it is compositionally to a canvas."

He's not averse to teasing candid performances from celebrities for Channel 4 either. His canny script choices, courtesy of the security of his Channel 4 role, come easy: "I want to find stuff that's unique, something that I wouldn't think of or couldn't write myself."

RSA Films http://www.rsafilms.com