As part of the rarefied strata of commercials directors that can do business under their surnames - think Jonze, Budgen, and Glazer - Daniel Kleinman is disarmingly modest about his abilities. Chatting with Boards while prepping for a Specsavers shoot in Vancouver, he seems genuinely humbled to be considered a "director in demand". But one look at the Rattling Stick co-founder's reel from the past year makes the case more than convincingly. Ranging from spots that meld effects savvy with in-camera magic (Smirnoff "Sea"; Monster.com "Stork"; Nissan Qashqai "Play with the City") to subtly haunting visual work (Jordan Brand "Engine") to entirely new territory (the all-CG Lux "Neon Girl"), Kleinman in 2007 once again made the eclectic look easy.

Having recently struck up an alliance with Epoch Films that will see all Rattling Stick directors, including co-founder Ringan Ledwidge, repped Stateside by Epoch, it's safe to say that North American agencies will be increasingly harnessing Kleinman's talents. Now that he's taking a break from helming the title sequences for the James Bond film series (he's overseen them all since GoldenEye), there may be a little more room in his calendar... but we wouldn't bet on it. While he says he has a "couple of irons in the fire" regarding potential feature projects, he's in no hurry to "go Hollywood". "I genuinely like my job," he asserts. "If I made commercials for the rest of my life, I'd be absolutely thrilled."

Your work this year has been typically wide-ranging, going from post-heavy stuff like Smirnoff "Sea" to the more visually-oriented fare like Jordan Brand. Do you have a preference at all when you get scripts, or is it "best idea wins"?
It really is all about the idea for me. If I read a script or see a concept that's fresh and has an angle that's new and I see a spark in it, then that's what I get excited about. It has nothing to do with genre. But hopefully you're never doing the same thing twice.

You've said you do like to capture as much in-camera as possible even with the more challenging jobs. Are there ever times when you get a board and wonder, "How the hell am I going to do this?"
(Laughs) Quite often. There are some things that are so wacky and difficult to work out that you can't use just one approach. One example is the Guinness ad [the Cannes Lions Grand Prix-winning "Noitulove"] - it wasn't possible to use just one method. Every shot was like its own commercial.

Is there anything from over the last year that you'd call a favorite piece of work?
I did a spot for Heineken ["Lobster"] which was fairly modest - it was rather idiosyncratically British in its humor. It dealt with how British people are rather reserved but there are some things we don't really like, including going into restaurants and being shown your food before it gets killed. That one still makes me laugh. It's a bit of a cliché, but I don't tend to look back. I like to look forward to the next thing.

Was there anything you shot over the course of the year that was a bigger challenge than you expected going in?
The Nissan job was a major challenge. There's nowhere to hide and no excuses, but one of the major challenges was the timeframe in which we had to do it. Not only was the concept of the Nissan commercial pretty wacky [in which a Nissan gets tossed around an urban environment by buildings and structures], but it had to be turned over very fast. So the way I tried to get around that was, again, doing as much as I could in-camera to help out the effects people and make their job as easy as possible.

Interestingly, Lux "Neon Girl" was the first spot that you did solely with computer-generated imagery... is that something you'll delve into more?
That was kind of a 'one-off'. I did investigate building an actual neon sign, and that would've been fine if we had six years and tens of billions of dollars! So it just wasn't possible and animation was the only way to go. It is the first time I'd directed something with no shooting whatsoever. I can't say it's the start of a new direction in my career, being able to sit on my arse the whole time and not shoot anything (laughs).

With all the changes in the commercial industry, it must be an interesting time to run a production company...
It is. What becomes more important in the work is making it entertaining, and making something that, if it's good, people will seek out, as opposed to fast-forwarding over it. I remember, with the Guinness spot, hearing about people searching for it on their systems, and playing it backwards, watching it the wrong way around. In one sense that technology can be frightening to the industry but it can also create opportunities. It just means that everyone's got to up their game a little bit.

INFORMATION
Production affiliations: Co-founder and director with Rattling Stick, London. Repped in the US by Epoch Films.

On music videos: Kleinman began his directorial career with music videos in the '80s, and while he'd "give it another go" for the right project, he's self-deprecating about his past work. "I feel incredibly guilty about the number of musicians' careers that I've destroyed by the crap videos I made in those days," he laughs.

Rattling Stick http://www.rattlingstick.com
Epoch Films http://www.epochfilms.com