DHISHKYAANNWW - The Shoot...

It has all come to a fulfilling end.

Almost two months of planning and fighting and mental torture has come to a close…. Actually a semi-close (if there is a term like that) with the shooting of the ad yesterday. A crazy month has flown past me and I can’t remember anything but “Peter England” making its way into my blood stream. The group of ten, aspiring ad makers has done some good work, I might say. We brainstormed our way into making a brand extension called Peter England Shaving Cream and now we have finally finished a tormenting shoot and it was all well worth it. I don’t want to get into the description too much but the way I see it, it takes a lot of foresight to make the d-day pass smoothly (pun not intended). Some solid pre-production work and minimal interference of one person's opinion in another's job can pay off by making you complete your shoot two hours before pack-up time. What we really enjoyed was the anxiety a day before the shoot.

It so happens that my apartment in Juhu (which is our location) is to be given out on lease the day after and hence is undergoing renovation. Two days before the shoot, the ceiling is pealing off, the marble on the floor is being polished to a shine, the fittings of all the washrooms are removed and the house is not in any condition to be lived in. At any given point in time, there were 13 people working, on every wall of the damn place and our blood pressures were on a rise. There was no chance in hell of it being completely ready on the day of the shoot and well, we had almost given up hope of a successful ad. An alternative was out of question because we had decided on the story board, the props and everything to do with the shoot well in advance. It would only mean changing the script. The lack of a back-up, needless to say, was making us bite our nails, fingers and palms. And we, in our infinite wisdom, went and decided to shoot first. It is only I who knows what went into standing there for twelve hours straight and getting those electricians, plumbers and painters to finish off the area in which we were shooting and obviously my group who stayed there with me, realized the anxiety I was faced with then. Two whole days were spent on set and that’s when the fun began. The best part is, we get the place done up at 5 p.m. in the evening before the shooting day. It was interesting to watch myself doing carpentry and my dear father doing some amount of drilling and nailing walls. Thank god for him and my mother, we managed to set the props up by 1 a.m. and it looked fabulous. The next day, the model was running a little late, few last minute hiccups were giving us the feeling of a major blunder but it all smoothened out and we finished the whole shoot at 4 p.m. that day. The pictures shall now speak.

This pack was designed by the group members and is not a commercial product

“Kudos to group six”, says our professor and it was an experience of a lifetime. My first ad shoot… only I know what the high is like. I shall retire to bed now. Sleep is a forgotten phenomenon as far as I am concerned.