This week I got a text from a neighbor. She said she was a talent scout for a local informercial company, and they were looking for a boy who looked like John. Would John like to go on a shoot?
Heck, ya!
I told her that sounded like fun, and we worked out the details.
The night before, I casually mentioned to John what was going to happen, that he would get to be checked out of school so we could go to this commercial filming thing, and how fun is that?
“I don’t really want to,” he said.
What? Having already committed to take him, I had to do some quick thinking. “They’ll pay you $12 an hour,” I said.
“What?” exclaimed Megan, “that’s more than I MAKE!”
I didn’t mention that it’s also more than I make as a substitute teacher, but that’s a sore subject, so I wasn’t going to bring it up and get ridiculed.
“Ok,” John said, “I’ll do it.”

We had to get a few clothing options ready, they said “colorful shirts” both long and short sleeved, and two different pajama options. So, I packed a big bag of clothes for John and a couple of snacks, and went back to the school (I had already been there from 8-9 for chime choir) and checked John out of school. We were supposed to be to this place in Springville by 10:30.

We got there in plenty of time, and Kandice at the front desk was super nice, and escorted us to the green room. Wow! It was like a nice, cozy family room. There were couches and a big tv, complete with x-box and cool games. There was also another tv around the corner and movies. John was glad he came. So, we settled in to play x-box for a while. No problem.

I had been told that it was a lot of waiting, so I was prepared with a good book on my Kindle, and I didn’t mind the wait at all. It was a little cold, but there was even a cozy blanket I could use to wrap up in. After a little while, Kandice came in to check out what clothes we had brought, and it seems they wanted a long sleeved blue shirt, which we hadn’t brought, so she went to go buy one quickly. More game playing. After a while, we were beginning to get a little bit bored, and then she came for us again. She had John change into the dark blue shirt and sweat pants, and we went into a big garage like studio in the back.

I forgot my camera, and had to take pictures only with my phone, but I’m having trouble getting those on to the computer, so we may be pictureless for this post–darn.

They brought us in, and told John that they were going to replicate a commercial that they had already done, and that’s why they needed a blonde boy in a blue shirt. You can check out the original infomercial here. This new product, instead of Dream lights by pillow pets, it’s dream WAVES. They had him sit up on a mock bed, with lights all around and green screen. He thought it was cool, except that he had to sit there on that “bed” (which was NOT cushy and comfy like a bed, by the way) for a long time while they worked on getting the lighting right. When they finally said “action”, he just had to push the light, look up, and look around on the ceiling and walls with wonder. No lines, no speaking, just looking. And they only filmed him from the back.

When I asked him if he thought this was fun, he said, “Not really,” but I thought it was kind of fun. Interesting, too.

We were there about 2 1/2 hours, and it’s maybe a 5 second shot. But it was something fun to do with my boy, and he’ll be super excited when they send his check, AND when we can see him in the commercial!