The boys' call time was 8:00am in San Rafael. Since they're normally so sweet as to sleep in until about that time, we knew we had to wake them a little early and hope that it wouldn't throw them off too badly.
We got up around 6 and rushed through our showers and prep, then carefully pulled the babies from their cribs and snapped them into their car seats right around 7am. A speedy, no-traffic drive across the Golden Gate Bridge and we were ready to load in at the house that was serving as the "shoot location".
We were taken into a downstairs bedroom which would be our holding area for the day and given the costume PJs the babies would need. We fed everyone a bottle (Caroline got some cinnamon apples with hers), then got Max dressed and Joe took him upstairs to the kitchen where a high chair was set up. The crew spent nearly 45 minutes measuring and adjusting and getting everything organized while Joe fed Max jar after jar of carrots and sweet potatoes (the scene called for him to play with his food). By the time they were ready to actually shoot, he made the mess they wanted, but he was getting tired and started rubbing carrots in his eyes, which did not make him happy.
"Cut! Bring in the second baby!"
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| Daniel and Mason, playing while Max is working upstairs |
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| Daniel and Mason, with Allan, who plays their father |
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| Caroline got to play, too |
It was time for Daniel to head upstairs and slide into the high chair. He put the same dirty bib on from Max's takes and settled into a bowl of sweet potatoes. He played with it, eating his spoon from both ends. Next, they gave him a sippy cup to play with (and, just like home, he played with the cup and banged it around, but didn't drink any). After that, there were a few scenes of him with his pacifier, which he promptly spit right out in adorable fashion.
The crew thought it might be good to try some shots with Cheerios, but the client preferred some "messy food" - there was discussion about whether they wanted Cheerios or "smushy food", and there seemed to be a language barrier that prevented them from processing the word "smushy". So they filled a plate with pureed carrots and put it on the tray in front of Daniel. He put his left hand in and explored. Then his right hand. Then tasted. Explore some more -- oh, is that the edge of the plate? Wow! Let's pick this up and -- Splash! Carrots everywhere! The director was very pleased with this development.
We were sent back downstairs to peel the carrot-soaked clothes off of him. At this point, the man playing the father in the ad was brought in to film some green-screen bits showing his hands holding a cell phone, with which he was supposed to be filming the bits of baby eating we'd just filmed. After that, Mason, the boy playing the 6 year old version of Daniel/Max had to squeeze into some 2T PJs to match the cute ones the 'teenies were in and watch their scenes and mimic exactly what they'd done.
During this down-time, we wrapped everyone in swaddles and snuck into the bedroom we'd been told we could use and all three babies took a nap of about 45 minutes to an hour. After that, we played for a while and then fed the babies an early bottle so that we could grab lunch during the 12:30 lunch break (yummy Cuban food, btw).
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| Caroline commandeered Carolyn's iPhone (Carolyn was the "set teacher" whose job it is to make sure the babies weren't overworked!) |
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| Max with his on-camera dad, Allan, and his real dad, too! |
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| Max did not care to be pictured with a fake dad, but in this photo I can't get over Daniel's expression |
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| Poor Allan, I hope he didn't take Max's crying personally! |
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| Caroline had a ton of toys to play with, but... |
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| ...she zeroed in on the dust cover to Mommy's book! |
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| Here are the boys with their on-camera future self |
After lunch, Daniel got called back upstairs for the second scene, which involved sitting on a blanket and playing with toys. Poor Max had been timed out! His call time was 2 hours earlier than Daniel's, so by law he couldn't work past 12:30! In fact, they had to sort of rush to get Daniel's second scene in before his clock ran out. So, Max had to do all the dirty work - wardrobe fittings, camera and lights - and Daniel got the bulk of the camera time.
At the end of everything, we even got parting gifts! They'd bought three pairs of the PJs they used in the scenes, and they were sold as a set of two (not two matching pairs), so we were given the three pairs of PJs that didn't get used in the commercial!
Hopefully, we'll get a copy of the final product. We're still not entirely sure where it will show, except that the contract listed it would be "internet only". The other boy's mother had originally been told it would be targetted at Central America (the dad has to speak Spanish), but was told by folks at the shoot that it was intended for use in the United States. I'm not sure how they'll decide, or if we'll even ever know, but we'll keep you posted if we ever see it!
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