A Singaporean commercial shot in London

Hi guys, I have had an interesting end to my last work week of the year - I have just completed a shoot for a print commercial that's quite specifically for the Singaporean market. Now many of you will wonder, huh - why is a commercial for Singapore being shot in London of all places? Don't we have enough advertising agencies, directors, models and photographers in Singapore to do it locally in Singapore without involving anyone in the UK? Well, allow me to give you a chronological run down of how I got involved in this so as to give you an idea of what happened. I do quite a bit of acting on the side and that includes both theatre work as well as TV/films work.

This was for a print ad for an event in Singapore.

13th December, Friday: I receive a call from my agent, asking me if I am available for a casting on the 16th December, Monday at lunchtime. I said sure, why not - just email me the details. My agent then confirms me for the casting and emails me the casting brief. It was for a 35 to 50 year old Singaporean male businessman and I thought, LOL call off the search, I'm your man. Talk about a casting brief that was made for me!

16th December, Monday: I turn up at the casting at Spotlight Studios in Leicester Square and to my dismay, the waiting room was full of South East Asian looking actors - it was a mix of nationalities: Malaysians, Singaporeans, Thais, HKers, PRCs - and I thought, damn, what are the chances? Pretty darn poor, given how many people they are seeing. I took a peek at the list of actors they were going to see - there were over 50 names on page one and there was a page two and three. So that could have been easily over 100 actors for a few parts available. Groan.

So many actors, so little acting work...

The audition involved me doing several things that a passenger may do on a plane - nothing really out of the ordinary and certainly nothing that demanded a huge amount of acting, in fact, they wanted us to be as natural as possible. Like, I couldn't even do a back somersault or a passionate speech to try to impress the casting director - I just had to do my impression of a passenger on a normal flight, duh. I left the audition thinking, that was a waste of time, given how many people they are seeing, I probably would not get the part.

17th December, Tuesday: I get a call in the morning from my agent, congratulating me for getting the part. I could hardly believe it - I do a little dance for joy as it is a very well paid job. I'm not supposed to disclose how much I am paid for this - but it suffices to say that it is the equivalent of what I would earn in a few months (for a two day shoot). Details follow later that day for where I had to go for the shoot. I hurriedly informed my bosses that my last day would be that very day, the 18th of December Wednesday - I had originally intended to work till the 20th December Friday. They were most understanding and obliging - it has been a rather quiet week anyway as we're so close to Christmas.

I got lucky whilst many were disappointed.

(Now I am sorry I cannot disclose the precise details of the shoot as the creative content for the shoot is meant to be kept secret until it makes its debut in Singapore in February 2014 - but I will describe my experience during the shoot.)

19th December, Thursday: I get up at 7 am, in order to be on set for a 9 am start (see the photo below). I spend most of the morning trying on different outfits. They decided on the shirt and suit soon enough - but it took them up till lunchtime to finally decide which tie for me to wear (I totally lost count just how many ties I had to try on). All this was after I have had my make up down, so the costume manager would not let me tie my own tie just in case I brushed against my face with my fingers and rubbed make up onto my white collar. So I just had to sit there and let her do everything - something I am pretty used to. When you meet someone like that, you just have to let them take over.

Taking a selfie whilst waiting around on set, enjoying the view

I learnt more about the ad campaign - this was for an exhibitor at the Singapore Airshow 2014 - one of the biggest events in the world for the aviation industry. The client is a major player in the Aviation industry and is creating a print campaign in conjunction with this important event in Singapore. This ad will go into all Aviation industry specific media in the run up to the event as well as into some local media in Singapore and of course, it will be used heavily at the event.  The client is a European company and they have a relationship with an ad agency who do all their advertising work - that is why the creative team for this aviation company is in London. Nonetheless, as this ad is for an event in Singapore, they were keen to get actors/models who look as if they can be local Singaporeans.

There are two other actors featured in this ad as well - one is a woman from Penang, the other is a famous older British-Chinese actor (he's been in so many things over the years and is far more successful as an actor than I am - he has even been in a James Bond film). The woman from Penang is actually an accountant by trade and has done practically no acting in the past - however, she was dragged along to the audition by a friend and she thought, why not? It was like buying a lottery ticket and sure enough, she got the job. I appreciated having someone I could practice my rather rusty Malay and Hokkien with (though her Penang Hokkien was rather different from my Singapore Hokkien).

Taking a selfie whilst getting my hair & make up done

Whilst the actors were trying so many different kinds of costumes, the lighting crew was setting up the room for the perfect shot. It was incredible - for just a photo involving three actors/models in a room, you had a huge crew of nearly 20 people working on different aspects of the production: make up, costume, hair, props, sets, lights, camera and a whole bunch of people on laptops and phones liaising with the client as well as the production team back at the creative agency. We broke for lunch at about 12:30 pm and we were told that we would start shooting after lunch.

Just to make sure we don't even get a speck of food on our costumes, we had to change out of all our costumes before we could sit down to eat. The catering did not disappoint: goat's cheese salad, couscous and a choice of chickpea stew or very spicy lamb curry. As we ate, there was a massive debate going on as to just which tie I should wear for the shoot - it came down to two blue ties which were nearly identical. They were the same shade of blue and just had a slightly different pattern on them - they had to email someone very senior at the client's marketing department and until they had final approval on which blue tie to go with, we were enjoying our lunch.

We tried on different costume combinations prior to the shoot.

Sure enough, just after 1 pm, we received the approval for the right blue tie and by 1:30, everything was ready to roll and the actual shoot began. It was super quick as it was a photo shoot (rather than a video shoot, like for an ad on TV). The photographer was after just one perfect shot and over the next hour, he took a total of 231 photos of us three together. As the scene involved us actors by a big window (with a glorious view over the City of London), at 2:30 pm, the photographer said, "I think I have what I need, besides, it's gone very cloudy outside and the light is just wrong now. It'll take too long to relight the scene now that we've lost that natural light - we'll just work with what we have. Okay guys, you're wrapped for today but we'll see you at 9 am tomorrow at the next location."

So by 2:45 pm, I left the shoot location with my two new found friends and my friend from Penang joked, "2:45 pm and I'm going home already? Not bad for a day's work! I could even run to my office now and do 2 or 3 hours of work!"

I tried on so many different ties that day just to find the right look!

20th December, Friday: I turned up at the studio (a different location from yesterday) at 9 am, only to sit around at the canteen area having breakfast and chatting with my fellow actors/models till 11:20 am when we were finally told that it was time to get our make up done and change into our costumes. The costume manager wanted our clothes to remain pristine for the shoot, so we only changed last minute just before stepping onto the set. We were joking that we could have easily turned up at 11 am and had two more hours in bed, but such is showbiz for you, I'm used to it after this many years. The crew had been at the studio since 8 am getting the lighting just right.

So when we finally turned up on set, I think we were only there for about 45 minutes or so - the photographer knew exactly what he wanted and it didn't take long for him to get it. It was literally tweaking the fine details like, "Alex, turn your head slightly to right but look to your left with your eyes, just subtly... Now can you lean forwards just ever so slightly - not that much, half the difference please." Each tweak got more and more subtle until the photographer told us, "okay, we've got it. Merry Christmas." I looked at the time, it was 12:30 pm - not bad for a day's work. We changed out of our costumes, went back to the canteen for a lunch and then said our goodbyes, wished everyone a merry Christmas and added a lot of people on Facebook. Not a bad way to spend the last working day of the year!

A view of the studio today from the dressing room

What happens next: The ad agency will take the photos into post-production and piece the ad together in early January.It will be released to the media a few weeks before the Singapore Airshow 2014 - so I imagine that by mid-January I will have a copy of it and I can show it to you (once it is in the public domain, then I can share it all I want, but not before then). Oh yeah and that's when I will get paid as well, sometimes towards the end of January.

There will be a part 2 to this piece because I spoke to a Singaporean friend on Facebook about it and despite the fact that he works in the creative industry, he actually asked some really bizarre questions. Like, I was thinking, do you really know absolutely NOTHING about how the advertising industry works? I suppose not, so in part 2, I will do a Q&A based on his questions. I was going to just address his questions on Facebook but then I thought, I'd turn it into a blog post and share those answers with all my readers. Have a read of it here as I share more insight into the world of advertising.

I'm no stranger to showbiz!