That's a wrap!

Yesterday Jadon and I had the tremendous pleasure of "going home" to shoot a commercial for Motts (juice and applesauce). What I mean by going home is that we went to Oak Park, the neighboring community to where my parents live and where I grew up. It was so nice to not have to fight the LA traffic and to look at the same gorgeous hills that I got to look at growing up. Although the location was probably meaningless to Jadon, it was just so special for me.

So...what happened? Well, I thought Jadon would have a bit part in this commercial, and who knows, it may be cut that way, but yesterday he got to shoot in 4 or 5 scenes. Although it didn't seem like they had initially planned to, at the end of the day they gave him a couple different lines to try out. One worked extremely well and I think they may end up using it (okay...it is one word, "yummy", but still cool). He got to stick his face right in the camera and say "yummy" (real drawn out...yuuuuummmy!) and then his Mom grabs him and pulls him back tickling him while his sister watches and laughs. It could be super cute.

The absolute two best parts of the day (for me) were the two huge compliments we got. The director was very nice, but busy, and hadn't really said much to me. About 2/3 of the way through the day he came over to me and said how how amazing Jadon was and how it is so rare to come across a four year old boy with his maturity and ability to follow directions and "hang" on the set for as long as he was. He said he was really nervous about our shoot because Jadon was the youngest kid they had booked for the day and they didn't have a back up for him, but that the day had been great. (I guess they had shot another commercial that morning where they had two 5 year old boys and he had sent the first one home and the second barely made it, so Jadon was a real treat for him). I mentioned it was Jadon's first commercial and he said something to the effect of, "Well, it won't be his last. That's what we are here for." Ah! How cool is that? Then, as we were leaving, I sent Jadon over the producer to say thank you for the day and becuase she had given him the outfit he had worn for the day as a gift. Despite the fact that he spilled a huge cup of candy on the floor while he was waiting for her to finish talking to someone else, she also said as we were leaving that she WILL be seeing a lot more of him. Then she asked if he likes Disney....uh yeah! Apparently she does a lot of work with Disney and she said she would like to use him for some Playhouse Disney stuff. So this may be a little spring board for J to get a few more commercials under his belt. It would be so nice to skip the auditions and just get the bookings!

So, Jadon started off realy shy and quiet in the beginning of the day (he was trying to be "good"). By the middle of the day, he was totally hamming it up for the camera and had everybody on the set laughing. We'd be watching the monitors as they were resetting the scene and all of a sudden Jadon's head would pop up in the camera and he would start making faces. I felt like I was watching a blooper real on TV...it was SO funny. The best part by far though was when they were shooting a scene where the boy and girl are supposed to run into the frame and hug Mom. She is crouched down ready to receive their hugs. So Jadon runs in and wraps his arms firmly around her chest and hugs and hugs and hugs. Everybody is giggling. SO the director says, "uh Jadon, hug Mommy's tummy, hug lower...around her tummy." So they do it again and in runs Jadon. He hugs right aroud her chest again, but this time he rubs her boobs (like he would rub to be affectionate). The whole set errupts into laughter because we are all watching it on the monitors. Of course, Jadon had no clue why everyone is laughing, but laughs too. Then the director sticks his head around the corner into the kitchen and for everyone to hear says, "Uh Jadon...this is a juice commercial, not a milk commercial buddy." At this point we are all on the floor and there are like 40 of us in the room just dying. It took so long for everyone to calm down because at that point in the day everyone was so tired, but things were going so well, it was that kind of giddy, silly, goffy tired. It was a total blast!

So where can you see this masterpiece of a commercial? I'm not really sure! It is supposed to air on PBS only beginning in late March, but I am not sure if it is actually airing on PBS or on Sprout, which is a new channel that I believe is affiliated with or part of PBS. We don't get Sprout. Apparently if you have DirectTV, you get Sprout. When we see it (I will sit at my parents house all day if I have to) I will try to tape it or find it on the internet and get a link to it from the blog.

Also, as promised, here are a few pictures from the boy's photo shoot last weekend. We don't have a lot of usable stuff for headshots for Carter (which was the whole point of doing the shoot), but we got some cute pictures of all the kids nonetheless.