I wrote Cinnamon Pops commercials that will pop your head

Kellogg's needed to let the world know about their new Cinnamon Pops cereal. They wanted to highlight the crunchiness, the cinnamon, the deliciousness. And of course it all had be entertaining. Right after the briefing meeting, my art director and I cracked the problem in 5 minutes while eating hors d'oeuvres at an agency party. Inspiration may or may not have come from a segment on my Rogers Community Cable show 20 years ago where I would draw a face on an egg and then crush it. See that segment below and decide for yourself.

There are more commercials to come. Currently online are the spots "Spelling Bee" and "Ghost." And on TV and in movie theatres is the spot "Opera."

Oh, and I'm also the voice of the announcer in all the spots and of the sleeping man in the Ghost spot. If you could tell that already, well, you're probably my mom.





And here are those clips from my old cable show. The egg crushing segment starts at 3:22.

A teaser for a top secret webseries

Sometimes projects take a long time to work their way through the production process. But I hate to leave you loyal blog readers starving for news. So I'm treating you to images from a webseries I've been shooting for the past couple of months. After shooting an episode, the director wanted to grab a few quick photos of us. I can't tell you much about the show until we officially launch it. But if you know anything about my lovely co-host, you might come up with some clues. Vanessa Farquharson is a well-known author/journalist/speaker with a particular interest in helping the environment. In fact, I first became aware of her when I saw her eco column in the National Post and I emailed her to say hi.
She wound up including me in a story about green dating, we later mulled over doing some kind of green show together, and, well, years later... Ok, if I say any more I'll be killed. Just enjoy the pictures.

I took Debra Toffan's animation voice class!

Yes, you've heard my voice as a Scotsman in the animated show Time Warp Trio and as a chameleon in the commercial for Hubba Bubba Max. But I'd like to do even more voices for animation. And I always enjoy taking classes to learn new skills in any discipline. So when I heard that Debra Toffan was offering a class for animation voice, I jumped at the chance to take the April 7th one. She's casted tons of animated shows and has voice-directed superstars like Matt Damon, Joan Rivers, and Holly Hunter. I was afraid that she would confuse me for Matt Damon, since he and I look so much alike. But fortunately, my vocal gifts made me stand out. Or maybe it's just that I'm a bit more muscular than Matt. ANYway, I had a lot of fun in the class, and I recommend it to any voice actors who get a chance to take it.

I review my script while other members of the class take their turn doing voices in the booth.

Debra listens to the actors in the booth and offers her sage advice.

I wrote this Eggo commercial that's music to your mouth

Got a song about Eggo waffles stuck in your head these days? That might be the fault of me and my Art Director, George Longley. George and I are a creative team at Leo Burnett (Canada's most award-winning ad agency this year) and we were asked to make a commercial communicating that Eggos can inspire kids to be creative. The result is a TV spot we call "Eggo Tunes" below. Take a bite. I mean, a listen.