:D

Some years ago a location scout for a TV studio came to our house and was floored at what potential it had for shooting. When its nice and sunny the outlook from the veranda is spectacular with a 180 degree view up and down the coastline.

Then in early 2008 we were contacted to do a few commercials for Arnott's biscuits.

The day they came we had the worst weather conditions in 24 years. Treacherous rain, blowing winds; the sun was not to be seen the entire day.

They brought enormous lights the power of several suns to light up the place like it was a bright clear day, and while they eventually got the shots, they weren't the ideal ones. The whole day was pretty stressful, we didn't know what to expect and the rain didn't help.

A couple of months later they aired on TV but my brother was the only one who saw them, partially. You could barely recognise the place since they could only use the inside of the house so that was pretty disappointing.

Fast forward 2 and a half years later, my parents were contacted again and within a couple of weeks they arrived early in the morning, with at least 10-15 vehicles originating from a place in Brookvale. This time the commercials were for a major investment firm.

I arrived just before 2pm when they had already been shooting since the morning. They had a bunch of vehicles right near the beach in the car park due to space restrictions. Arriving home I found everyone to be having lunch, which was perfect timing as I could look around quickly before they got back to work.

I had no idea what to expect or from what kind of setup they would have, but as I walked into the area they had been filming before lunch I was blown away by what I saw. An absolutely massive RED camera. RED are pretty much the leaders in this area right now, and are one of the best cameras you can buy. This one had a 24-290mm lens on it.

It's not often you get to see this kind of gear working in the flesh so I was pretty ecstatic :D.

After they broke for lunch they switched to another shot in the driveway and from there I could see how everything worked. All the shots were being wirelessly transmitted to a bunch of monitors and to the main console which was running some software with a Mac Pro underneath, it was like a mobile editing station.

The place was buzzing, I was watching the camera operator and focus puller handle the camera, director and producer watching one of the screens, production manager, all the assistants, medic, actors and everyone else.

Another cool thing is that at one point (as far as I could gather) they streamed the footage directly to the client to get immediate feedback and to see if they approved of one particular shot.

I've been following the whole digital video craze that has blown up over the past few years and a little while ago I watched a workshop from Vincent Laforet that explained, in detail, camera setups, crew descriptions, lighting, filters, what happened on set, everything. So thats why it was so cool to witness professionals doing it in person.

They shouted: "Quiet on set", "Action!", "Rolling", "Still rolling", "Don't look directly at me", "Again", "Once more". At one stage there was a butterfly directly in front of the main actor that was perfectly on cue, so it became a running joke to "Cue the butterfly".

Watching one of the monitors they were getting some amazing depth of field shots because they were taking advantage of all the large open space.

They had used pretty much every angle in the lounge, main bedroom, kitchen, verandah and outside in the garden. There was one particular shot where they used a small room off the main bedroom which looked great when you're looking down into it around 10 meters away (last photo).

The crew were super nice people as well, at first I thought I would get in their way, but as long as I didn't get in front of the camera it was pretty safe to walk around, the speed at which they transitioned in between scenes was impressive as well.

The commercials themselves were, in fact, pretty depressing. With lines like "Now I don't know if we'll ever get to go" and "I had to sell shares just to keep the money rolling in".

Towards the end of the afternoon they were wrapping up, gradually restoring our house back to its original state. What was nice was that they used a lot of the original furniture and props so it wasn't a drastic change.

In reality there's little chance of seeing the finished product, hopefully we get lucky or they might send it to us. If you see a guy with a long hose or a depressed woman talking about the GFC, those are the ones.

The studio paid $3400 for use of the house covered with $2 million of insurance in case they broke anything or the floor collapsed. Not a huge amount but still pretty good when you didn't really have to do much, besides cleaning the house beforehand and being around on the day if they needed you; they handle everything else.

After watching them work it made me think back to when I was younger and thought how cool it would be to work in the film or TV industry and in particular how fun it would be to operate a camera. Doing anything film related though looks like a pretty sweet job.

When I said how awesome it all was, one of them said to me "It's just our job, we do it every day". I think it would take awhile for me to get bored, it was an entertaining day.