Saturday, May 21, 2005

I love Infomercials

Working on them, that is. I can't stand watching them.

Yesterday was an infomercial for some special knife ("It cuts on a molecular level, Bob. Can you imagine that?" "Why, no, Kelly. What does that mean?" "Well, let me show you!") - I can't remember the name.

Infomercials are easy money - no one's in a hurry (as opposed to a TV show where you're shooting 7+ script pages a day and everyone's freaking out about 'making the day' so they rush), everyone's relaxed and having fun and the day rate is sweet.

There's also no 'agency people' there, since infomercials (at least the ones I've worked on) aren't paid for by ad agencies. It's more of a direct marketing thing, so you have the product reps there, but they're usually really really nice. Don't get me wrong. Ad agency folks are nice as well, but they do add a lot of tension because they tend to micro manage every aspect of the commercial.

They're easy to light as it's usually a kitchen set or a sofa group and once you're lit there's not much to do.

We got there, hung a bunch of lights and aimed them - this took about three and a half hours. Once we were done, it was just little tweaks here and there.

Fun stuff. I'm glad I was in the AC all day, too.. It's hotter than hell out here right now.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is that called a "set and forget" here too?

Peggy Archer said...

Yes, it is. Although it's almost never that easy - you go in for a closeup and have to tweak or bring in some sort of eyelight or kicker...

Why yes, it is - the Hollywood slang for an overhead flat lit set where no one has to do anything once it's lit is, indeed, 'set and forget'.