My Very First TVC!

I am proud to announce that I finally had my very first, freelance TVC job (after months of wondering when I would actually have the chance to work on video again). To be honest, I was a bit jittery when I heard about this, I immediately called Food Styling master, Eugene Raymundo (who happened to be way out in another country…nakakahiya) to ask him for some advice…which he willingly gave. I knew I could do it, but of course, it was like being a rookie surrounded by major leaguers, I didn’t want to be a screw up at all.

I’d like to thank AMP Amon+Maneze Partners Ad Agency for this URL. Giantsponge and of course the Kenny Rogers staff for giving me this opportunity to do their TVC.

I only did the styling on the new TVC, the 2nd part of this video.

You can check out the boradcast version here – http://amonmaneze.com/

Fil called me up, after just almost a week since our KRG project and told me someone from the Ad agency would coordinate with me. I had told the clients that this would be my first TVC, which they actually preferred (whew!). It was so funny because Macel, from Giant Sponge (a prod company I had almost worked with a couple of months ago…long story, I’ll save that story for…hmm…myself haha) called me up and said they were going to be doing the prod for this project.

Meeting day 1: I had lunch with my college bestfriend Anna, who was also there the last time I had a meeting with Giant Sponge. I always have lunch with her to calm my nerves, especially when it’s production related (Anna works in a special effects and editing house).

After lunch and laughs, I entered Giant Sponge and heard Direk Gus Cruz go, “Oh my gosh? Giannina ikaw ba yan?!” … “Yes!”…”Matutuloy na rin tayo!”. From the time that I met him a couple of months back, I have always felt that direk Gus would be the best director to give me my baptism of fire into the video production world as a freelance food stylist. After an hour or two of going around their office, meeting the people involved, we took a short drive to the AMP (Amon + Meneze and Partners) agency who is the ad agency handling the project. I then met Jon Amon and Jun Meneze who seemed to be ready for direk’s storyboard presentation. I came home with the things I needed to prepare for in the preprod…and a slight anxiety attack.

Meeting day 2: We all went to the client’s office together, met with the project heads and eventually, Ms. Bern who is the president of the company. After knowing the general direction of the shoot, I checked out the griller that we were going to use for the shoot.

Back at Giant Sponge, I met Chet and Sir Edwin, the production designers for the shoot. We were all waiting for the Technical Meeting, which is a meeting where we’ll talk about the flow of the shoot and the stuff needed…this is where I met the propsman, Boyet (who I eventually started calling McGuyver during the shoot after watching him turn a paintbrush into a self basting machine!). We had all these meetings because we all needed to be in-sync on the day of the shoot. Everyone’s role is important and we all had to work together to make this project the best that it could be. After the tech meeting, I had lunch and went home and started my shopping list on the materials I was going to most likely have to buy for the shoot.

6:30am calltime. I think the last time I had this early job was about 2 years ago when we did Kusinabilidad…and I was with 2 other stylists then. But this time, I was the head…and only had 2 people who were helping me : ever efficient Ray (of course!) and one of my students in the 1st batch Tricia. From the time that we got there till lunch time, all we did was prep…my prep checklist looked somewhat like this:
– thaw out chickens
– sort out vegetables
– sort out chickens
– cut vegetables
– sort out muffins
– cook chickens for talent
– prepare chicken for stunts
– prepare rice
– prepare muffins
– prepare vegetables
– prepare herbs
– prepare sauces

But this shoot was extremely different from my first video shoot, because I had to prepare everything on the day itself (something I would probably never do next time). And so, Ray Tricia and I were pretty busy from 6:30am all the way until lunch time and from lunch time all the way until dinner time. KR’s RnD chefs Deo and Riza, were helping us there showing us which ones were right, what to do and what looks correct…so we have truth in advertising!

The edible food for the talents were carefully cooked and made with love just so their eating shots would be a pleasant experience for them (since they were going to be doing it over and over again). Sir Edwin helped me out on this part since the prep area was so far from the shoot area, he took care of passing the food to the talents and making sure that the food was okay.

Talent’s shots were finished at about 6:30 pm, where the crew took a break for dinner.

By then, I was still prepping extra stuff, but I was almost done. All items to be shot had to be checked by the RnD, the agency and our client. Tricia had to leave and it was only Ray and I left. Then the fun part…

Stunt shots came and Boyet “McGuyver” was doing his thing with his gadgets on set…over very hot grill. After hours and hours of transporting, fixing, refreshing, and changing the chickens over and over, we finally had our 7 stunts finished.

I now realized that in video production…you need hideous amounts of the products. All of the products. And it is always better to have more than less. And it is always better to have a back up plan…and it is always better to have your prep done ahead. And the stuff in the storyboard is just a guide…the food stylist has to always be ready for anything (this came straight from Ms. Delores’ mouth…only it was already 2 days after the project).

Everyone was trying to keep the shoot energetic…I was specifically impressed with the energy of most of the people in production, especially direk gus and boyet, everytime I looked at them in action, it gave me that life breath that I had to keep up and do the same! Things were done with a degree of passion that you don’t see in people on a daily basis.

The shoot was finished, and we lugged all my stuff down the road and into the car. I realized I had been standing for the past 20 hours…only sitting for maybe a few brief periods. I was thinking about how I did…how I could improve in my timing how I could improve everything. I was really blessed that Mig was there and decided to stay to bring me home, we were all so tired considering that the sun was already out by the time I got home.

It really makes me marvel at the fact that all the people and all this work was for the best 30-second ad for our client.

Now it’s a form of crazy passion. And I like it!