What just happened?

I sort of wish that I could just vulcan mind meld with you guys to explain the last week of my life. After what has been one of the slowest years ever for work. Nipper and I have been much busier lately. We spent so many months laying around the house looking at each other, and trying to figure out how to occupy the daylight hours (see entire blog, and disastrous home improvement projects below), that it's been really refreshing to be racing around again, late for everything, and wishing we could get a moment to breathe. But in the best case of be careful what you wish for, I give you the last 168 hours hours. Brought to you by Hallmark!

Last week, I booked an Expedia commercial with the French director and artist Sophie Gateau. Besides the fact that she's French, and cool, and has better hair than almost anyone I know, she's also super nice. I don't want to say it's rare to work with a nice director, but, uh, well, she's rare, and it was awesome working with her. We shot the spot on Friday on the Paramount Pictures lot. I thought I'd take some pictures for the blog. A lot of commercials are shot in real locations (houses, restaurants, etc...) so it's sometimes fun, when you get one on a lot. You get to see what always feels to me like backstage on this whole business.

The Melrose gate at Paramount and the water tower in the distance

the view from outside our stage

This is where we get breakfast and lunch on a shoot. Kind of like a taco truck, but more delicious

Me and Torsten getting my hair and make-up done in the mirror

Hair and Make-up, wardrobe, and lunch were set up in an empty stage nextdoor

We shot the whole thing on a green screen so they can add cool visual effects later

uhm, stage 4, the stage we shot on...duh.

First of all don't look directly at my arms, they are larger than the adorable French woman standing next to me. Also it was hot as hell in there, and this was the end of the day, so I had taken my wool jacket off. It was the stylist's jacket, and it was Commes Des Garcons, and I'm afraid she's going to have to burn it now, because it will forever have my funk in it. Secondly, all three of us girls in the spot are from Michigan, how random is that? Thirdly, this is a really bad picture, and I'm not sure if it's because the iphone had a hard time focusing with the green screen and the lights or the 2nd a.d. is a dumb dumb.

Ok, so that's all I've got. I wanted to get a shot of the workers putting up the stories high Christmas tree at the front entrance, and some of the sets, like the giant side of the building painted with sky and clouds that they used for the Truman show, but by the time we wrapped, I had to run like Hussein Bolt to get to my car to get home in time for our hard working nanny to get to another job (hello guilt). Oh and because I had to get home to arrange to get my entire family to NYC by Sunday night because we all booked a Hallmark commercial with ERROL MORRIS directing!

What the what? Ok, I'm going to split this up into a few posts because now I'm exhausted and afraid my brain might explode.