This was the first commercial I ever made. In 2003, ad agency SpotCo saw the Gay Boyfriend video and reached out to me to make something similar for the Broadway Musical “Wonderful Town.” I convinced them to use a motion control camera, pretending I had experience with that. I did not.

This is a side-by-side comparison with an animatic I made to plan the “Wonderful Town” commercial, and the final product. It was a big break for me and I planned every last detail in After Effects. I am still amazed how close they are, although you can also see that I missed the Busby Berkeley shot! Great lessons for a young filmmaker: plan like crazy, and then be okay with whatever happens on the day.

I traveled to Milan in 2006 to shoot this absolutely bonkers Italian soda commercial.

In 2006, I read an agency treatment that wanted to recreate a NASCAR race using cakes for Sony's HD TVs. I knew I was just the guy for the job. I conceived of this wild rig through which we could puppet cake cars and play mash-up derby! Check out the behind the scenes clip.

A technicolor musical shot in Portugal in 2009 for a Russian juice drink. Sometimes I pinch myself for the wild places work brought me. Check out the behind-the-scenes video.

A look into the shooting of “Tonus” in Portugal over two days in 2009.

I used the crafty team from “Fat Guy Stuck in Internet” to create this political ad in 2010. Watch the behind-the-scenes, too.

Another wild Russian commercial from 2011, this one shot in an olympic sized pool in Moscow. There’s nothing quite like shooting underwater scenes when you don’t speak the same language as your actor or safety divers. I told the production we’d need two days to shoot this. They asked “can we get it done if we shoot 24 hours straight?” Turns out, you can!