Yay I got hired! A Look at the Behind the Scenes of a Commercial.

Hey guys, I got some pretty exciting news to share! I couldn’t upload a post on time because I was busy shooting a commercial for Rogers! It will be aired during Chinese New Year on Omni 2 and Asian channels such as Fairchild T.V. It was definitely one of the most memorable experiences in my life. I hope that the experiences I share with you can give you a look into what it’s like shooting a commercial. Here it goes!

The whole commercial consisted of 3 parts:

Smile at the camera!

Day1

My "families" wardrobe!

Living in Mississauga sure isn’t fun, especially when busses only begin to run at 9:30am near my place. So I had to wake up at 6 am, walk to a main street and take the bus because I needed to be at their studio by 9. Fun stuffs. After I got to the subway station, guess what! The Subway didn’t open until 8:45am. What a great way to start the day! Nonetheless, I got to the studio and began to have some fun. There was already a Makeup Artist there doing someone else’s makeup. I met the mom, dad and sister there playing my “family” for the commercial. The wardrobe director told me to change into my fittings and after I had to get my makeup done. It is not all fun. I got my eyebrows plucked for the first time, and it was in FUCKING unbearable pain. Other than that, she was really nice and really professional. When I got in, I had to do 2 poses for the Print Ad. On a side note, breakfast and lunch was fantastic! We had

A box that contained some of the lenses

real authentic Italian food and it was amazing but the producer said not to eat so much because he didn’t want us to get fat. LOL. After my 2 poses, my “mom” went in and did hers. It was pretty funny because one of the lights lit on fire and we were making jokes saying that “my mom is so hot the lights were on fire”. Not really funny. The fire was put out and after my mom’s shoot; there was a family shot without her. And then that was it! Day 1 was finished. It lasted from 6am-6pm, and it never felt so good to hit the bed after a long day of fun.

Don’t be nervous!

Day2,

My sister and dad getting their makeup done

Today was good because I got a ride to my shoot location but I still had to wake up at 7am. I’m not really used to it. After I got there, breakfast was served! It was amazing once again. My family got their makeup done and once again the makeup artist plucked my eyebrow hair. I thought it was done yesterday but apprently my eyebrows are so ugly they had to be plucked two days in a row. After, I changed my clothes and we were ready to rock and roll. Day 2 was the video commercial

Breakfast is served

and setting up took a long time. Lighting has to be perfect so there are no shadows and of course the camera takes a long time to set up as well. The interesting thing is that it was shot in a mall so there were shoppers there looking at you while you did your take. So it begins: for each scene, it took us 15 takes to get a perfect one so we were behind schedule. It was really fun and the director and producer were very easy to work with. When we finished half of the scenes, we took a break for lunch at a real authentic Chinese restaurant. Man, food is always the best when you go on set! Afterwards, I wasn’t needed for one scene so I went and talked with one of the editors on set and I learned a lot from him as well as the editing software they use. Everyone was really nice and approachable and just simply fun to be around with. It was around 5pm and we finally finished the video shooting at the mall. Lucky for us, we got an hour break before

Setting up for the shoot!

we shot the sequel for that commercial at another location: someone’s house. So as time passed, we started the next video shoot. Setting up is the biggest time consuming process. This video shoot was interesting because it’s done in 1 continues take, so if someone FUCKS UP, we had to do it again. It was fun, took us around 50 takes before it hit midnight and everyone was tired and finally went to bed.

Talk into the mic!

Day3

Although there are booms to record your voice when you talk during the commercial, you still need to do a dubbing of your voice so it sounds clearer. This was my first time doing a dubbing and I did not know what to expect. I got to the studio, and they explained what dubbing was: talk into a mic and re-speak your lines. So basically when singers record their songs, you record your lines and they take the best one and use it. I had to say around 10 lines? And the first one took me 58 takes? And everybody in the studio was pissed off because they never had such an amazing record of someone doing a line 58 times! But afterwards, I was more relaxed and each line only took about 3 takes. This was a very interesting experience and of course a lot of fun.

So that concludes my little journey for 3 days! I definitely met a lot of amazing people as well as gained valuable experiences and learned a lot from everybody. I hope everyone sees my commercial on air!

A picture from me!

I wish everyone an early Chinese New Year and thanks to each and everyone one of you that have supported Bananaloft!

“For one second that you do not give up, there is hope for the next second”

Jimmy

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