Jonathan Bensimon

It’s a testament to Jonathan Bensimon’s work ethic that we’re doing this interview on iChat. He is in Montreal working on a job with Sid Lee while I sit in the offices of Industry Films, the production company that reps him, in Toronto. Bensimon likes to work.

He is most animated and talkative when the subject of the conversation turns to a film or commercial he’s worked on, and his passion for directing is evident. And it seems that, unlike Nolan Sarner’s late arrival to the world of film, Bensimon always knew what he wanted to be.

“I was three years old when I wanted to make Superman fly,” says the 30-year-old director. His father worked as a director, a TV executive and latterly as a commissioner at the National Film Board of Canada, and his grandfather was a photographer, so image-making, whether still or moving, is in his blood.

Bensimon initially studied cinematography at film school in Toronto, which led to an opportunity to study in Budapest. There he was taught by such luminaries as Vilmos Zsigmond, DP of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Deer Hunter, and László Kovács, DP of Easy Rider. It transpired that Zsigmond was soon to be shooting the new Woody Allen movie in Toronto, and Bensimon’s persistence in wanting to be involved saw him shadow Zsigmond for a month on-set.

“That got the ball rolling for me,” he says, “and gave me confidence in being able to shoot stuff.” After DPing on some short films and documentaries, he was asked if he’d ever directed anything. A short film he had helmed impressed the right people, and that slowly led to him “shooting a few spots here and there”, and soon after that, he wound up at Industry. Spots for Honda, the Hearing Foundation, a two-minute film for fashion outlet Simons and, of course, an ident for shots issue 103 ensued, all of which have helped to cement Bensimon’s reputation as a diverse and talented director.

But it’s his recent short film, Tokyo/Glow, which has caused the biggest stir. During a holiday in Tokyo, after working as a DP on a friend’s feature, Bensimon noticed something that put an idea in his head. “It’s weird how small things jump out at you,” laughs Bensimon, “because I noticed that the crosswalk guy wasn’t a stick-man like he was everywhere else in the world, he was wearing a fedora and a suit. The fact that they gave this guy characteristics appealed to me."

Once back in Toronto the idea wouldn’t go away, so he and a friend found the money to fly back to Tokyo a year after the initial visit, found a producer to help them and set about “a full-on guerrilla shoot”. This entailed wrapping the actor in 100 metres of LED rope lights to make him glow, with a car battery strapped to his shoulders. And because they were using a stills camera, they had to shoot the two-minute film one frame at a time.

“Just picture a guy glowing in the middle of the street taking a step every two or three seconds and people not knowing he’s being shot because we’re so far in the distance with a telephoto lens,” Bensimon says. “Drunk people would come up to him and start harassing him, but he kept going and just muscled through it.” Bensimon and his crew – all two of them – also had their mettle tested to get through the project.

While with hindsight, the director says that shooting in Tokyo was amazing, he also admits that filming Tokyo/Glow was a hugely challenging experience. Shooting the Shibuya crossing sequence alone was like a military operation. “We knew that a vantage point could be found at the top of this five star hotel, but they don’t allow tourists to just go up there and hang out and start taking pictures,” he says.

“They actually escort you up the elevator; so I went up with the producer’s assistant and she had my camera and my lenses in her purse. We pretended we were going to our rooms, the doors close and we go towards the windows and I take out a little tripod.”

Pressed up against the glass of the 25th floor, just out of reach of the security cameras positioned in the hotel to – probably – catch such surreptitious short filmmakers and their glowing cast members, Bensimon relayed to the ground troops that he was ready to roll.

“And he starts to walk across the crossing,” the director continues, starting to laugh, “but because he’s taking a step every two seconds, he can’t get across the street before the lights change and the cars start streaming through. So he has to run back and remember where he left off so that when the light changes back again he can run back to that spot so we can start shooting again. He had to do that four times.”

It’s a testament to Bensimon’s directorial determination that the film got made at all, but the fact that it was such a success when it came out surely makes up for all the hard work. Released earlier this year, it was a huge internet hit which featured on style.com, Vogue’s website, as well as on Justin Timberlake’s site.

“I think we’re in a time when you have to generate interest in your own projects,” comments Bensimon. “You can’t just wait for things to come along, so we just wanted to do something that would have a bit of a buzz, and we happened to have this suit that glowed.”

Bensimon believes that Canada – and in particular Toronto – offers a lot of creative freedom for artists and directors, and not just in advertising, though he feels he’s been fortunate this year to work on some great scripts and to invest some of his own creativity into them without having to follow a pre-ordained shot list.

Talking of the future, he says that while he will occasionally continue to DP features, he’s not looking to direct one of his own in the short term. “I’m really happy with the way it’s going in advertising at the moment, and I love that every few weeks I get to try another genre and that I’m not really pigeon-holed with anything. I think I’m going to keep going with that for a while and to try to work in different places around the world to try different stuff and meet different people.”