Unnamed Commercial Shoot

So what does a film shoot entail… lots of work, many people and great coordination. I certainly have a new respect for the difficulty of filming a 30 second spot for television that most of us just skip right through.

The whole procedure

Choosing your home

To start things off a location scout came by to see if my home was worthy of shooting in. If it gets placed on the short list the directors, producers, etc, come by for a visit to understand where and how the commercial will be shot. Then if it passes this test and your house is chosen the primary team of about 10 people come by and storyboard every shot and figure out what furniture and props to bring in for what rooms in your home.

The day before

A day before the shoot a team of people comprising of the ‘set dressers’ and the ‘location prep’ come into your home to safely pack away your things, move your furniture and protect your walls and floors. The set dressers then stage your home with their furniture according to the story boards. In the evening a security guard comes and starts placing orange cones on the street to reserve parking for the next day. And yes his job is to sit there all night.

The day of

This is where it gets crazy but remains extremely organized. Everyone all 50 of them show up at your doorstep. To say the least it is overwhelming. There are the producers, directors, gaffers, actors, clients… and the list goes on. The electronic gear comes in first and the clients get directed to their seating area to watch the whole production. I saw a distinct line between the pampering of the clients and the workers on the set. After areas are cardboarded off and the lighting is set up they pull away the protective floor carpeting, the actors move into place and the call for ‘quiet on the set” is announced. Besides from a lunch break, this goes on for the next 12 hours until all the scenes are filmed. When the day is done the electronics are packed up and all electric is removed along with all the people and the long day ends.

The day after

The set dressers and location prep people come back and pack up all the rental furniture and props. The carpet pads are removed, the cardboard is taken off the walls and the cleaning begins. After the cleaning is finished a team comes in and replaces all the furniture to where it was originally as marked on the floor with tape or as seen through pictures taken previously to the shoot.

My impressions

The following things stood out at this particular film shoot:

1. The people in the crew are extremely courteous and polite and professional
2. Smart phones are distractions during filming (in one room about 8 people were sitting around playing with their smart phones instead of talking with each other, one of them even went so far as too say that the phones allow them the opportunity to not talk with each other… they all laughed)
3. There is an enormous amount of work that is done for a 30 second spot.
4. There are always too many people in a room.
5. Acting is not necessarily fun, either is directing
6. The clients are treated very well, and they seem to come out of the woodwork late in the work day
7. One day of shooting translates into three house days and more than a few initial walkthroughs
8. The cleaners that they brought in were excellent and really left my place sparkling

For ‘type A personalities’ like myself you just have to keep to yourself while everyone is performing and address and fix anything minor at the end of the shoot. (in my case, minor things needed to be fixed) Thankfully this process smartly allows for a liaison to the home owner called a location manager and for me this person was James Dawe and his assistant Luke Marshall. They are the people entrusted with the homeowner’s relationship and if it wasn’t for them it would be too difficult to deal with. A special thank you to James, he really came through.

It was a very interesting experience overall. My advice for anyone considering this would be to try and make it a multiple day shoot because once they are in, either for a day or for a week it doesn’t matter. You might as well get paid for it. I think I would do it again and if I am permitted to get picky I would like to do a television or movie show next to see what the difference might be.

In the end though it was great to be back in my home again.

Photowall Snapshot

My Impetus

I love my family and friends but I don’t really like family photos spread all around a home and for me the problem with photo albums is that I liken them to corporate art stored in vaults… no one gets to appreciate them. I wanted to showcase my life with family and friends so that I could let them all know I appreciate them and to make myself smile knowing that there are so many people and situations that I have enjoyed. So I set out to create an anamorphic, film dimensioned 2.35:1 photo wall that I could easily update that contained many photos – besides I had the wall space.

The Requirements

I wanted this process to run smoothly so I knew I had to do a little research upfront. I wanted showcase my snapshots but not the frames because with a repeating pattern of photos the frames would seem heavily weighted in the end product. I also needed them to be inexpensive because I was going to have to buy a lot of them. I choose frames from IKEA called ‘Clips’ they fit my need perfectly. These frames can be hung either vertically or horizontally which is great, they have no frame whatsoever, they are extremely light and thankfully inexpensive. I only bought the 4”x6” frames… 220 of them of which 204 are on the wall.

When I examined the frames I realized that I would have to get nails that supported each of the frames well enough so that if the glass frames were poked (by little kids and big ones), they would not easily fall off the wall. And this is where I had to do some research. To make a long story short I found a company called Under the Roof Decorating that produced a product called ‘Deco Nails’. The reason I choose this particular product was that it did a few things to make my life easier:

1. The nails don’t make a large hole in the wall.
2. They have a double ‘saucer’ type head in which they secure themselves to the wall and also make a more secure hanging point for the ‘Clips’ frame hanging mechanism.

I actually think that these nails are rather ingenious, although a little pricey so I worked with a woman named Linda at their main office in Calgary to bring the price down significantly for the quantity that I needed.

The Procedure

And I am sorry folks this is where I could start writing volumes but I am going to be extremely brief in this section. However the pictures at the left of the screen match up to the steps below.

• Step 1 | Since I needed to make sure the whole picture wall would be evenly hung and accurate because of the sheer number of photos I decided to make a template in Adobe Illustrator that I could easily print out and tape together. This template contained all the markers I needed to both align the separate sheets of paper into one large sheet and also highlight each specific point where a nail was to be hammered into the wall.
• Step 2 | Next I taped the whole sheet upon the wall and make sure it was level. By the way, this is why I went through the pain of ‘Step 1’ because afterwards the rest was very simple since everything was aligned and leveled and nothing more needed to be measured.
• Step 3 | Another close up of the whole sheet upon the wall.
• Step 4 | I used one of the nails to make a smallish imprint or sometimes a hole into the wall at every point in the template where a final nail was to be hammered in. I then removed the large sheet from the wall and hammered the Deco Nails in one at a time. This took awhile; having more arms would have helped. There was also a bit of wall cleanup involved.
• Step 5 | This is a sample of the first two ‘Clips’ frames on the wall, one with a photo and one without. Notice how the nails sit flush against the wall.
• Step 6 | At the beginning I had only a few pictures to place in the frames, but I still placed the empty photo frames on the wall.
• Step 7 | This is how the frames look on the wall. When designing the template I spaced every frame about 3 centimeters from each other in both the x and y axis. (some of the frames contain a white piece of paper, some do not)
• Step 8 | All the frames up but only half the pictures.
• Step 9 | The finished ‘family and friends’ photo wall.

The Result

Thank God it is done. It took some time and good old-fashioned elbow grease but I am extremely happy with it. I have already begun to place in new photos and I am looking forward to my photo wall’s evolution. I think I have the most fun though when the younger kids see it because they quickly start scanning the wall and always let out an excited shriek when they find themselves.

Never-the-less I am intrigued by people’s imaginations and always get my camera out when I see new (or not so new) examples of gates, fences and doors. India was rich for ideas but the following series of photographs are from Canada and the United States. They are not meant to be art shots, but rather an image log of possibilities. At 418QE I am constantly reminded of how not to use metal for security because the front door area of this house looks like a jail cell more than a welcoming home. The metal bars are here for a purpose but one day they will hopefully be replaced with a more suitable and less gloomy metal or iron gate.

I should mention that India was a feast for the eyes. Unlike most places in North America India had a wonderful way merging chaos into beauty. Everything seemed lively and comminicative, the following photos are a tiny example of India’s richness.