If one can use Tom Kuntz' ebullience in Boards' conversation with him as a barometer of the directing climate that MJZ's comedy kingpin has weathered over the last 12 months, it sure has been sunny. The enduring currency of great American advertising has long been laughter and in recent years that's been epitomized by the edgy, off-kilter, usually candy-related style that Kuntz deals in.

He may be king of the kooky, dialogue-driven vignette, but he's far from being a one-trick pony. This year has seen him go beyond his continuing excellent and fresh work for Skittles ("Piñata", "Stable" and "Touch") with slickly-styled spots that nevertheless maintain his trademark eye for art direction (Dell "Colors"). He's also helmed cinematic period piece humor for Altoids ("Invention", "Printer", "Promotion"); a clever but distinctly unfunny - and we mean that in the best possible way - single-shot music video for LCD Soundsystem ("All My Friends"), as well as big VFX spots for FedEx ("Pigeons") and savagely satirical work for American Legacy Foundation ("Typo" and "Magical Amount").

With the general weirdness of the work you do, you must have some good stories from this year...
On Axe "Chocolate Man" the first actor had this weird, perplexing allergic reaction to the suit so by the end of the first day he was literally breaking out in boils. It was really gnarly and we had to literally send him to the hospital and find a new kid. And with the new kid who turned up the next day, clearly no one had told him what happened to the last dude, so it was like, hopefully this guy doesn't self-destruct. It was like being in a wetsuit all day; it was pretty intense. I'd never be able to do it.

Your Bumblebeez video also looks a little kinky to be honest...
It was a little gross. The guys were all in various states of grotesque body cleanliness, but we did all the drawing the night before in the hope that we would avoid a bunch of work the following morning. But they came in and it was all smudged, so we had to literally rub the guys down with rubbing alcohol and clean them up and redraw on most of them. It was really nasty.

Is it fun talking to your kids about work?
They think I have a crazy, weird job that's really funny. They're always asking me, "What are you filming today?" Honestly, I try not to show them a lot of the commercials because I don't want them getting a passion for commercials, but I show them the music videos. I had to look at the edits for "Chocolate Man" so they were around and obsessed with him. For them chocolate's the best thing in the whole world and for a dude to be made of chocolate? It's like I made this for them.

There's a very distinct aesthetic to your work. Are you a stickler for details?
Yeah, I am. Certain things warrant it more than others. For example, the Skittles one, "Piñata", that's one where it's very, very designed. I wanted it to look kind of dumb and lo-fi because that makes those performances more endearing. If that had been really slick and cinematic it would have looked so overproduced that it wouldn't have been as likable. Dell "Colors" is ultra-slick, but it's like that on purpose because the whole idea is super-slick. Usually it's trying to get the visual tone right, whatever the joke, making sure whatever you're trying to do works. Sometimes if the two don't match up it doesn't work and you don't know why, and it's because it doesn't feel the way it should.

What's your view of comedy spots that use a lot of VFX?
It's fine, although I don't like to use a lot of CG. In order for certain things to resonate you have to film it in-camera to know if it's working while you're filming. Even when we did the Skittles "Touch", that was all in-camera, all plates. There were no CG Skittles. We blew up a desk made of Skittles and we made a stapler made of Skittles, held together with pins, and retracted them slowly. We did it all for real so we knew what was happening on the day of the shoot. It wasn't like then having to spend six months making Skittles feel like Skittles in a computer. It feels like a colossal waste of time to me.

With the pigeons [in the FedEx spot], well, there's no such thing as huge pigeons so they had to be all CG. We were just shooting plates of the city street with people acting to nothing. When I was working with Framestore CFC they were great and they made it work. But whenever I have a chance I try and keep it in-camera.

Do you think your style has moved on and developed this year?
I hope it has. There are definitely a few things that I look at, like LCD or Dell, and think, "Well, those are things that I'd definitely not done before." That's a really nice thing if it happens. You feel like you broaden your own scope of what you do.

INFORMATION
Production affiliation: MJZ worldwide, Suneeva in Canada.

choosing scripts: "First and foremost I look for things that are good! I'm doing an AT&T thing; the commercials are extremely simple, but to me that's as interesting as some complex, filmic storytelling job. Truthfully, it's about finding things that are interesting and that I haven't already done."

Suneeva http://www.suneeva.com