Contact Lens Job - Amazing how its shot

Hi all,

Yesterday I had a job for a contact lens company that to be honest I didnt really know too much about what the job entailed. I arrived a nice late call time of half 10 to see a studio that was filled with people and everything was in the process of being set up. It was a commercial, or so I thought. What I then found out a bit later was that I was shooting a "how to use contact lenses" video for the companies website. Very random, but at the same time I must admit I thought very very easy! mistake!

So the day started sitting chatting to the girl model there, an Anerican girl called Mel, married to an English Director, who had some amazing stories to tell. Thats whats great about jobs sometimes when you get to meet such a range of people with some incredile stories. Mel was great and we got on great, which always makes a job a lot easier. Make up artist had some great stories too about jobs when she was younger and abroad, about all the inner crew relationships! ha ha was so funny hearing all the stories. Next thing I know its about 1pm and lunch time! Yep all morning spent chatting and not doing anything at all. Easy job or what!?

After lunch and more chatting and relaxing this time with more of the crew then its time for me to get ready. Im the wake up guy, so bed head and m & s pj's! ha top of the range modeling you see. Then into the studio and under the hottest lights ever and time to shoot, which I thought would be nice and quick and easy. I was quite heavily mistaken! If any of you have worn contact lenses or use contacts, you know at times they can be very fiddly. This became one of the many problems on the shoot. The client was very specific about each bit being shot precisley, for example, washing your hands, drying your hands, the taking out of contact lenses, the placemen t of the lens...etc etc.

So after all this and maybe doing a few different little snippets of the film and Mel had done a few too, I looked at the time! 7pm!!!!!!! and at this point there was still loads to film. The crew, who had been so calm and relaxed all day starting to feel tired and you can tell the frustration on everyones face starting to build. That can often make you feel like its all aimed at you for not doing the shot right, when its not me at all, its simply the placement of my hands or a motion that the client is specific about, but cannot explain properly. Becomes very difficult.

Well we got through it in the end, was finished at 10pm, which was a long day for me, but the crew had been at the studio for 6am! So I made sure I didnt moan or complain about being tired cause I had done nothing compared to them. They had set up the scene, a sink and mirror with running water in it in the middle of a white studio, simple but amazing to be able to do that.

Then it was home time. Long long day, but a good job with nice people and hopefully they could use me in the future, fingers crossed of course!

James

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