Road Warrior

This month is going to be..well..painful from a travel perspective. I just left California, where I've been for the last 4 days, and crazy storms here and winter storms in Utah almost kept me from leaving. Welcome to winter, and welcome to flying. In the next three weeks I discovered I will only be home for 3 days.

Most of my trips involve filming for clients though, which means there are plenty of laughs to be had. I'll share a couple from the shoot this week.

We are sort of simultaneously filming three different videos for Hampton Hotels. One is a training module, and two are more internal marketing pieces. One of the marketing pieces we pitched is what we are calling "The Music Video". Hampton is trying to buy the rights to the song "Personality" as in, cause you've got personality, style and personality, walk, personality..you know? They are changing the word personality to "Hamptonality" which will mean that Hampton spirit and way of doing things combined with personality. I'm sure this was fairly simple to figure out, but I write for what we'll call "the low-hanging fruit." People who may not be as smart as we think. (You know who I'm talking about.)

Anyway, after one of our 14 hour days on set, we were out eating and perhaps a little punch-drunk (just punch) and started coming up with what I will loosely term brilliant ways to film the music video. We got some of our "characters" to sing pieces of the song in what I'll call disney musical style. So for example we had one guy coming down the hall of the hotel singing and as he traveled he would tap on room doors and people would come flying out and join him singing "Hamptonality!" while dancing and jazz-handing it behind the main dude. It was all quite cheesy and delightful, but my favorite moment came on about the third take.

Adam (the lead singer) started down the hall singing in his, well, not so great voice, when one of the Hampton team members who was participating came flying out of his room to join. He was inspired by hamptonality no doubt and actually came flying out of the room doing a CARTWHEEL. It was so unexpected and so funny that the brand manager who was watching (and who was quite serious and unsure about this production) actually lost it and was laughing hysterically. After that move the B.M. was completely bought in to the video.

Another classic was when I was forced to jump in on the last scenario as one of the guest's wife. (our scheduled actress didn't show up.) I was trying to teach our "actor" how to act natural when walking toward the desk. The client thought I should just join him to help guide him... as his wife. I'm not an actress. I was supposed to just be quiet and let him talk, but you know, that's not my strength. So, once they yelled action I couldn't resist chiming in, but I wasn't expecting the improv-ed comeback. You can see the result in this out-take. (which will be posted.. on You Tube until I figure out how to make it work here.)