We’ve got some of this going on here today.
If you can’t tell, that’s camera equipment.
They wanted a bedroom with blue walls. I sent them pictures of Megan’s blue room, and they chose to come here to film. So I had Megan clean like the wind. Actually, she just cleaned regular, but I had her put EVERYTHING away. I’m glad I asked her to do that, because they have moved her room all around to arrange the shot.
Her room is not that big, so they ended up moving her dresser out in the hall, moving her desk, etc.
What’s the product, you ask? It’s Dreamlights, the stuffed animals that can project images on the ceiling.
The director didn’t like that we have can lights, as they are shooting images of the ceiling, so we looked around the house to find other areas that might work. (Might I add that not all the other areas had been cleaned? I’m adding that). I took the director up to John’s room (which also has blue walls) and he even looked at Natalie’s room (which has these greenish blue walls that I do not like, and it needs to be repainted. Because every time I look in her room I am reminded that eggshell paint is not the same as semi-gloss paint, and how could I make that mistake? Anyway, he said that Natalie’s room would work, that it’s big enough and they could just shoot a certain corner and get the ceiling.
We also looked at the kitchen area downstairs. It does NOT have can lights, but one light in the center of the room. They thought that might work.
After they filmed some shots in Megan’s room, I went to take a peek and see if they needed anything else (they had asked for pink blankets, which lucky for us, I have three girls, so we DO have some pink things around), and saw that they had now moved to the kitchen area of the basement.
They just took Megan’s mattress off the bed and moved it into the kitchen. “Wow!” I said, as I came down. “Don’t worry, we’ll put all this stuff back”, said my neighbor. I don’t mind that they have moved things. They are paying me to use the house for the shoot, and if they want to move things, that’s fine. Just different, right?
I love how they just moved the stove and the few random Christmas trees that were down there, and pushed them to the side. I did tell them that they could move anything they wanted, so it’s all good. The foosball table hold extra blankets.
A different boy came later, and they realized they needed a red shirt for him, so that he looks just like the boy they already used in this commercial. No problem. We have a red shirt somewhere. (I had to search through a couple kids’ clean clothes baskets to find one, but I found one, thanks to Hope of America).
Pink Blanket? No problem. Blue blanket? No problem.
Oh, and I ran up and cleaned the pile of clothing off of Natalie’s floor and vacuumed, just in case they decide they do need to film up there, too.
After a couple more kids came, they decided to use Natalie’s room. They want it to look like several different locations. I only peeked in while they were setting up that room, but it looked like they were just focusing on the boy on the bed and the ceiling and wall behind him. It meant a lot of carrying stuff all the way upstairs.
All in all, not a bad gig. It was fun to meet the people who were coming over for casting, and the kids all thought the birds were fun. I wish I had thought to clean the UPSTAIRS of the house, as well as the family room downstairs, but there’s only so much I can have clean in one day. They were considerate and put everything back how they found it, and maybe someday when we see that infomercial–because I LOVE to watch Disney channel and see what they are advertising–I can say…”Hey, that’s my house!”
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