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Man, we never would have guessed that being a part of Bantus would land us in an advertisement!

A production house approached us to do an ad for an electrical goods company and they wanted an all-man team of 6. Unfortunately Queka dislocated his shoulder again and had to be replaced—I was picked because the clients had spotted me lurking around on one of their demo tapes when the initial audition was held. What can I say—I felt bad that Quek couldn’t get the part, but on I was personally thrilled at the prospect of being in a commercial.

Anyway, we all signed the agreement that bound us to a 2-day shoot in order for us to get our pay. I’ll keep the amount private since I’m unsure as to whether such information is sensitive, but it was enough to pay for our Pangkor trip and part of Han’s insurance premium. The money couldn’t have come at a better time.

The photos here were taken on the second day of the shoot.

View from the balcony just outside our changing room.

The director’s most-repeated phrase to us: “Those [clients] are very funny…”, followed by instructions to do a variation on a sequence that we had been repeating over and over and over again.

It was quite cool to work in this green area—to make it easier for animators to incorporate their computer graphic images with live figures, the whole area we worked in was painted entirely in matte green. All the corners were rounded. Combined with the strong lighting from the rafters above, shadows were kept to a minimum too. In this scene Andrew and I were supposed to leap off our platforms onto the gondola, but I think they’re scrapping that.

I’m sure he wanted to make a point of some kind.

A typical Andrew moment.

We were trying very hard not to crash spectacularly into each other, or leap into the very expensive camera.

Flat Perereca. It was quite taxing to stay in those suits, which were made of non-stretchable material and were extremely well-insulated.

Wardrobe malfunction! Terry’s costume is being stitched up.

The lamp that emulates daylight, used for the stills shoot. I remember one of the lighting crew saying that it was 18,000kW or something to that effect.

We were sweltering in our suits! Everyone was in a notably better mood at the prospect of finally wrapping up the 2-day shoot though.

The one scene that I don’t have a photo of is Bantus’ makeshift ping pong area. We played using our slippers as bats, grabbed a few spare ping pong balls from the CG people (they were being used as markers in the green area), and sat opposite each other on the mattresses by a wall. One of the crew even strung up “Do Not Cross” tape between two chairs so he had some sort of net.

All in all we quite enjoyed yourselves, despite the long waiting periods in between the shoots. I wouldn’t mind taking up another job like this—the money’s pretty decent, given the amount of actual work we had to do. I’m bringing a thick novel with me the next time though…