Day Eight; The Shoot

Today was a new experience. I woke up at 6am to be on time. I was suppose to go to McDonald’s in Damansara Damai (I haven’t even heard of it) at about 7.30am to 8am and so I followed Mum to work and she dropped me nearby One Utama to catch a cab. Initially the cabdriver asked for RM20. I said no, and then he asked the magic question. “You kerja kat McDonald ke?” I arrived where I wanted to at about 7.40am, paying only what the meter showed. By the way, my answer to his question was…unmistakably yes. It takes a bigger swindler to con a swindler like me Upon arriving, I saw two big trucks packed with filming gear and the taximan said “Wah ada shooting ka? You banyak nasib! Boleh tengok.” I nodded while my pancreas secretly laughed at him. read Aliya wasn’t there yet so I talked to Eric, the director. Eric appears to me as a talent-friendly and patient man. After all, he has to deal with two kids today. Jerwin aged 4 and 5 year old Katherina. I asked if Eric worked under Leo Burnett too and he told me that he works under Superwonderful, a production house. It goes like this, the client hires an agency and then the agency outsources the filming to a production house. Casting and talents search are depending on the production house’s services. In this case, this was a packaged thing so; talents, production, and post-production are all given to Superwonderful to take charge of. I started snapping away immediately. It has been months since I held a decent camera and my fingers were excited. In no time, 200 photos were taken. I had to delete some as I only have 1GB worth of space today. At medium size, I could take close to 600 pictures only. Oh, my companion today was a D70 and an 18-70m F3.5. I then met the kids, Jerwin and Katherina. There were cute as heck! There was having their make up done. One of the make up artist had tattoos on both her arms and they were quite nice. Katherina, the girl, was evidently a morning child. She went on and on and on talking. She loved the camera too. Whenever I pointed my camera at her, she immediately flaunted her best and cutest smile. She was very polite too. She started every sentence to a stranger with an ‘excuse me’. Jerwin was a quiet one when I met him. Maybe he just got up but he was cute none the less. He too, was very camera friendly. When I asked him to smile, he would and would ask for more shots. Jerwin’s family was there too. His dad Jonathan, mom Nellie, and his sister Lavinia all came to accompany him. Little did they know, Jerwin didn’t need company, Katherina and him became friends and that was sufficient. Besides, all the other staff was more than willing to spend a minute or two entertaining the two stars of the day. Hussien was a man in his early thirties who was supposed to play the Dad in the advertisement. He was a quiet man whom I didn’t get a chance to talk with. At about 10.25am, someone called out to me and it was Aliya. Aliya is a really nice person. She kept on asking if I was ok and offered to answer any questions I had about the whole shooting process. Sometimes she would come and chat with me a little. She is a really sweet person and I am so thankful for her. She explained to me about our department, and its function and how it connects to this shoot. In Brand Management, we are the one who always have to fight. When a client wants something, say an advertisement, Brand Management are the ones who becomes the link between the client, the creative department and the finished product. I have mentioned this in one of my previous post. Now the reason why a lot of fighting and debates happens in Brand Management is because, they have to acquire as many components as possible from the client to provide the creative team enough limits and boundaries to work within YET give them enough room for creativity. The creative team needs to know how much resources are they given, how much time, and all those yet have enough space for them to input their own ideas. Besides that, Brand Management has to fight for their client’s wants as well as protect the creative department’s work. Ironically, Brand Management is actually the link between the two and determines the rough idea. Aliya says that sometimes, (actually most of the time) clients make really bad calls on their whole campaign, and it is the agency’s job to suggest and fight for a better solution and some clients are willing to listen. However, there are clients that will say “Screw you, I’m paying the money. You do what I want.” That is when we have to also consider the name of the agency and reply “Screw you too, we have a reputation to upkeep and you have to allow us to help you achieve sufficient fitness to actually compete in the market.” It is not easy balancing a client’s wants and the agency’s needs. This is a very important thing to constantly remember in Advertising. After that, I bought a burger for lunch and as I was about to sink my fangs into my Spicy Chicken McDeluxe, I was abruptly stopped by two cute beings. Jerwin and Katherina. Katherina came first and asked me why I was eating a hamburger. She said she liked noodles but she like hamburgers too. She then started playing with my chili sauce packet by trying to smash it and make it explode. Jerwin then came by. I had to stop eating and started snapping away. These two are too adorable to not take photos of. They each smiled and then Katherina showed me a sad face while Jerwin did a happy face. Then a scary face followed by a monster face. Katherina then asked for some tissue paper and for a piece of paper. She was trying to fold the paper in a package. She then gave it to me and said it was a present. Ohhh how sweet! When I opened it, it was a straw fully plastered with sticky clay. Eeuw. It’s still in my bag though. Oh before that, while I was looking through my pictures…I heard a stomp of the foot. Hussien had smashed something under his foot and was calling for a worker to bring a mop. Suddenly my heart paced. I think it is what I think it is. A…cockroach. He then lifted his foot and revealed a flat and SUPER DUPER EXCLUSIVELY EXTRA SUPERSIZED UGLY COCKROACH. OMG! Thank god I was looking through my pictures and not at the floor when the cockroach ran in front of me. I would have screamed worst than little Katherina. Jerwin was also shocked at the sight of it. Anyways, I found myself always looking at the make up artist’s tattoos so I gathered enough courage and asked her if I could take photos of her tattoos. She said sure and so I snapped a few shots of her. I then found out her name was Vicky. Thanks Vicky, though I doubt you’ll find your way to this site here. At about 1.30pm, it started pouring all the sudden. It made me really sleepy and I was already quite tired and restless by then. I bought myself a Chocolate Sundae which succeeded in keeping me up a few extra minutes. It was a really new experience seeing a shoot for the first time especially when kids are involved. Eric took many takes on the scene where the father, the son and the daughter had to be together. Everyone had to constantly remind Jerwin and Katherina to do what they were supposed to. Jerwin was supposed to give a James Bond pose which he referred to as ‘The 7’ pose. Katherina had to play with her toys. At about 2.45pm, I asked Aliya if she needed me to stay till the shoot was over and she said it was ok, I could go. I hitched a ride from Katherina’s mom to KL Sentral. It was a long 2 hours journey because some roads were under construction in Damansara Damai so we had to go further up and around the world to places like Sungai Buloh and maybe Kuala Selangor before actually going on the Federal and NPE. I was so tired I accidentally fell asleep in the car for about 10 minutes. Ok, maybe it was 30 minutes. Sorry! After I arrived at KL Sentral, I took the KTM to MidValley to pick up my pants I bought yesterday and also to meet Ruzanna and Amanda. They were in casual clothes and that’s what they could wear everyday! How nice. I then went to look for a sandwich (I still have a sandwich crave) and Amanda showed me where her office was. After that, I went to get a cab and arrived back home. Sorry I can’t show you pictures related to the shoot yet. It isn’t ethical and I think I have to wait until the advertisement is aired. It is schedule to go on air probably late December. Oh by the way, this shoot was for a template shot. This means that the scenes are all the same throughout the regions but when it is given to the other regions; they add their own text, their own language and stuff like that. After today’s shooting, the off line, which is a rough video presented to the client will be prepared and then an online, which is a refined version of the video will be prepared. It usually takes 2 to 3 weeks before the thing is processed but we’re hoping to get this done in a week. There are 6 commercials to shoot and this is only number 1. I have a feeling I’m going to be in for more The shoot has taken up more than half a day and it is only a 15 seconds ad. 15 seconds on air is a whole day in reality. No counts of “Fuck” and any other words today. Hmm, I wonder how Ah Boy and Gogula are doing in Leo Burnett. Tee hee hee. See you tomorrow! ~