Today, I went on a shoot, that turned out NOT to be a behind the scenes of a photoshoot, but a live shoot! It was a christmas TV commercial for Westfield shopping centre. It was a very long day, but so insightful! Alex picked me up at 8am and I arrived home at 9.30pm!
There was synthetic snow, christmas trees and floating teddies! Basically, the concept is that all the products, toys, clothes, jewellery, electronics, cosmetics etc etc, escape from the shopping centre at night and go into this house. They either climb through the window, go down the chimney or go through the letterbox. They did this with these 4 amazing puppetiers, they attached all the objects to rods or for some, like the teddy bear, they could put their hands inside and make him walk and dance etc.
The actual shoot (as we were behind the scenes, shot on a Z7) was shot on Arri Alexa, which before today, meant nothing to me, but apparently thats pretty amazing kit and it did look awesome.
I learnt a great deal, especially about production shoots in general, we were like 3 hrs behind schedule, it takes so long to get the perfect shot, especially as it will be heavily edited to cut out the puppetiers. For instance they always had to get a clean, empty shot after filming every object, for the edit to be possible. I also learnt that there is a lot of waiting around on set! And that if it is catered, the food is amazing! But on a serious note, it was so insightful, and Alex even let me get my hands on the camera and do a bit of filming!
Alex and I also did some interviews, so I mic'ed them up and assisted there.
All in all in was amazing, I shall upload some pictures I took now, and once its done, if I can, I will upload our behind the scenes, and the actual ad itself.
great stuff! The waiting, always the waiting! i remember it well!
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