Days 10-11

Once again, I feel cheated as my '14 Days with Larry' has officically been reduced to 11 days. Given our good fortune with the weather, we were able to complete the shoot without any 'weather days'. The good news is that we are all able to return home to our families early and for me this means celebrating Ella's birthday a day late rather than four days late.

Our last day at Jack's Point in Queenstown went very smoothly. There were brief interruptions from planes dropping human cargo (sky divers) and occasional screams from falling passengers, but all in all our day was largely uninterrupted. The 'Rapp' party commenced early Tuesday evening and ended late on Wednesday morning. The Kiwis were tremendous hosts and are clearly gifted at celebrating life to its fullest. No doubt, the 36hr trek home will be more difficult for some than others.

We leave New Zealand with a greater appreciation of the land, people and culture of the Kiwis as well as a few new phrases to enhance our vocabulary at home. Expect me to throw these out in future meetings:

"full-on" = over the top
"sweet as" = absolutely, that's cool, I agree
"rippa" = great (e.g. that was a 'rippa' of an idea)
"slapper" = women with loose morals (maybe not this one)
"how ya going" = how are you doing?
"heaps" = lots (but they use it all the time)

- I've got a bunch more in my notebook...

Special thanks to Ken Arlidge, Arrow productions, Robber's Dog film company and especially Peter, Dave, JC and Sarissa at Ogilvy and Paula, Carol, Alison and Mike for their efforts in bringing us this far. We look forward to seeing what becomes of our '11 days with Larry' and hope they will result in a brilliant and immensley effective new campaign.

Days 7-9 Dunedin-Oamaru-Queenstown

The team was grateful for a free afternoon in Dunedin on Saturday after a long day of shooting multiple scenes on Friday. We bid farewell to Jon, as work was calling him back to Ridgefield to prepare for his next international adventure in Paris the following week.

Saturday evening we drove to Oamura, dropped our bags and were blown away when we arrived on set to see what the production team had done to transform an otherwise provincial looking street into a beautiful Main St. boulevard in Anywhere, USA. After a few days of comments and questions (some, less than welcome) from the clients in “video-village” Ogilvy made a strategic decision to place Saturday’s video village in a full service Kiwi pub. From my vantage point it was the smoothest day of the shoot, so in retrospect I guess Ogilvy’s strategy worked brilliantly. A few rain delays kept us into the wee hours of the evening before Ken called it a ‘rapp’ at 2:30AM.

We were a bit groggy on Sunday morning, and Amrish and I decided to play a little ‘Snooker’ to dust off the cobwebs. I thought regular pool was hard, but a regulation snooker table makes for a lot of long shots and consequently a very slow and humbling match. Later that day we had a long drive back to Queenstown and stopped at Wooing Tree vineyard for a few tastes of their prized Pinot Noir before settling back into our hotel in Queenstown.

Monday (or Super Bowl Sunday in the US) proved to be the most interesting and challenging day of the shoot. Our ‘hide-and-go-seek’ scene was set in a wooded setting (Arcadia Station) within the town of Glenorchy, apparently the same setting used for several scenes in ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’. Mid-way through the first scene the production team surprised us with a satellite hook-up of the Super Bowl set up in a sheep trailer! Larry was not as excited as the rest if us, but still enjoyed having a little taste of home. I will never forget watching the second half of Super Bowl 43 half-way around the world in sheep transport trailer on a rugged cattle farm. That will not likely happen again in my lifetime.

Spirits were up as we moved into the late afternoon preparing for the pivotal scenes of our talent delivering (what we hope will be) the most compelling lines of the spot. With perfect lighting, wardrobe and background Kathleen began to read her lines almost flawlessly. However, all the wildlife appeared drawn to lights and activity and soon the backdrop was corrupted with a cacophony of cows mooing, bulls snorting and exotic birds chirping. It was funny for a while, but as the daylight waned and sun began to dip below behind the mountainside, collective frustration set-in and tension on the set mounted. One bull in particular was particularly brazen and seemed to taunt us by timing his loud grunts and snorts in sync with the call for ‘action’. After another brilliant read was spoiled by the bull, Ken (our director) burst out, “Somebody shoot the damn thing or give it a h-job.” The bull responded almost immediately with a loud roar, which everyone interpreted as the bull’s declared preference for the latter, prompting a chorus of laughter from production team. Clearly the day was shot, and we would have to start-again in the morning.