I am more than proud to say that I was part of the team that made the newest TVC of Ideal Pasta (Ideal Macaroni & Spaghetti).
So here’s a summary how it went down:
My call time was at 9:00am but I was already up by 6am because of my excitement. I had to do shopping and preparations the day before.When I got to the set, they had already started to shoot and so I had go start fixing my station up. Was also glad that the director was Gus Cruz, who also directed the first TVC I did last year for KR, and took an entire load off my back on thinking about what to expect in the shoot and what not since I feel pretty comfortable with him.
Abby, the production designer, did a fantabulous job in making the set for this shoot. They were able to fit 2 room setups and an outdoor set-up at the far end of the studio. The kitchen set-up was fabulous, it looked like a place you would really want to cook in despite the fake sink and cabinets.
Luckily, I was already positioned next to Kuya Boyet’s table (the propsman) who was already busy working on his mock packs for the shoot. As soon as I got my area set-up (where I had to position my stove, a light, my giant cooler and trash can), my assistant and I already got down to cooking packs and packs of pasta. From the time that I got there, they needed their first food at around 11:30 am, I had already prepared most of the ingredients the night before so I just had to bring the food out and make them camera ready. I had to sort out pasta that looked the best all morning and make the gold standard of the plating and styling of the pasta that we were going to use for the beauty shot. It was a pretty tedious job considering that I probably went through maybe 12 kilos of cooked stuff…this was enough to feed the entire crew! As for the other pasta ingredients, they were already pre-cut, pre cooked and just needed to be retouched or heated.
Sir Rolly, the Assistant Director, was busy at work on set to ensure that the talents were giving out the right emotion as per the Direk’s specs. He also gave me ideas on when I should be getting ready for in the next hour, which was great and made our work flow much easier. While waiting, I would either set up my plates, keep my veggies fresh or sort out the most beautiful ingredients for the shots.
It was good that our talent Don, who played the husband, already knew how to cook. We gave him a few chopping tips but it already looked like he has been cooking a lot at home. We let him chop the best looking salad tomatoes (Thank God for the pick-your-own section at SM Hypermart!) for the prep shot. He also did a great job on the tossing part and the crew and direk were cheering him on since we got so many beautiful shots when the food would come perfectly flying off the pan in slow motion. I think stunts are the coolest part of the shoot.
We did a lot of the close-ups and beauty shots the next day (where we had to shoot a different TVC too under the same company). There was a lot of detailed work the next day since they were close-ups of the food so I had to make sure that everything was properly sorted out. In the end, this shoot was really fun and the day before prep helped me become more focused on detailed work aside from enjoying what was going on in the set. I really am proud to be part of this TVC project! 🙂
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