Oh, yeah, I worship Recuenco and his work, (especially the Loewe commercial with a massive wink to Kar-Wai, this is simply breathtaking), but he is a completely different story, as you say
Bruno Aveillan, who is my favorite commercial director (have you seen his work for Louis Vuitton, Shangri-La and all the perfume brands? Most beautiful thing ever created), is also an accomplished fine art photographer , but again, completely different story. These two guys' work follows a completely different pattern, nothing to do with the dslr-wannabe-crowd.
Of course, it's a great thing that some great directors will emerge thanks to this newly found mass access to cheap video tools, but there is one major problem to that: as with digital photography, now with cheap digital video the world is flooded by an immense wave of unconscious mediocrity, and everybody who can make you somebody is so bombarded with it that they actually stop giving a ****, and this makes the whole making-it-big process way more difficult even for the few ones with real talent. Yes, everybody has an open "speakers' corner" with the internet, but it's of barely any real use - actually, more and more I believe that the less online presence you have, the better. Steven Meisel doesn't have a website. Nor Camilla Akrans. Etc. So I believe that not being part of the ME-ME-ME-desperate-for-attention-online-facebook-linkedin-crowd is what could make somebody stand out in this all-online, all-mediocre age, as long as you mingle with the right people *in real life*. Sorry, went way offtopic
Just my 2 eurocents