Thrill Me (Fool's Gold #18)(59)
He put his hands on her shoulders. “What does your gut say?”
“Jump.”
He lightly kissed her. “What was that line from Titanic? If you jump, I jump?”
She laughed. “All right, Mr. King of the World. We’re about to take a really big leap.”
* * *
FORTY-EIGHT HOURS OF preproduction wasn’t nearly enough, Maya thought, telling herself to breathe. The temporary offices for the commercial production were housed in a large conference room in the Lucky Lady Hotel. She had three computers, a giant screen, the rented equipment, a list of people hired for the shoot and ordering privileges with room service. The latter would be great if she wasn’t so nervous that she couldn’t eat.
Ernesto walked her through the storyboards for the three commercials they would be shooting. Three commercials in five days. Impossible, but she was going to make it happen. The alternative was telling them no—forcing them to rehire all the equipment, production people and actors. No way that was going to happen.
Editing would take another couple of weeks, but that wasn’t her problem. Right now she had to get organized to take advantage of the best hours to shoot outdoors. The indoor shots could be done in the middle of the day and throughout the night.
Del hurried over with several printouts. “Weather,” he said, handing her pages. “Cloudy tomorrow.”
If they’d been alone, she would have kissed him. Because clouds were her friend. Everyone wanted the magic shot. Blue skies or a perfect sunset. Great for B-roll, but when it came to shooting actors, clouds dispersed light. Clouds allowed her more control over her own light and when it came to making the shot look amazing, light ruled.
She returned her attention to the storyboard. “You’re missing the call to action.”
Robert and Ernesto looked at each other, then back at her. “Excuse me?”
“The call to action.” She lowered her voice to sound like an announcer. “Call now and reserve the time of your life.” She returned her voice to normal. “Whatever it’s going to be. You want whoever is watching to do something, right? Not just think, hey, great commercial. You need to show the phone number, the website, offer a discount. Close the sale. Technically, we refer to that as a call to action.”
“She’s right,” Ernesto said. He stared at the storyboard. “They’re all missing a call to action.”
“We’ll fix that,” Robert told her quickly. “Can you still get this done on time?”
“Sure. The call to action will be added during editing. Just be thinking about what you want your message to be.”
The men nodded and left. She and Del returned to the storyboards. Each scene would require setup, filming and then breakdown of the equipment. Time of day was essential for outdoor shots. She’d already prepared a list of B-roll shots she wanted. Once they broke down the storyboard, she could do a detailed schedule, basically hour by hour, for the next five days.
She’d already gone over the equipment. It was good enough to make her both envious and weak at the knees. Just the lighting, she thought, wishing her Fool’s Gold budget allowed for the extra lights. On the commercial, they would use 3-point lighting, with the primary outdoor shots being filmed in the morning, preferably on a cloudy day.
She had an assortment of lenses for the cameras, tripods, not to mention designated hair and makeup people, along with a wardrobe person. Just like the real thing, she thought humorously, thinking how she and Del had made do when filming their stuff.
The commercial would be more complicated. They would be shot in high resolution. She’d already confirmed the commercials would be shown only in the States, which meant NTSC rather than PAL. It had taken five minutes of explaining so Ernesto and Robert understood the difference between formatting for the United States—in NTSC—and formatting for Europe.
“I want to sort through the various shots,” she said. “What we’re going to shoot when. With the clouds forecast for tomorrow morning, we’ll get some great outdoor footage. Can you look up sunrise time tomorrow? And I’ll need the twilight information.”
Del raised his eyebrows. “Twilight as in Team Edward and Team Jacob?”
She laughed. “No. Not the movie. How do you know about them?”
“I’m a man of many sides.”
“So I’ve heard. I need to know what time the morning and evening twilights are. Astronomical, nautical and civil. They’ll be earlier than actual sunrise and later than actual sunset.”
“Because it’s all about the light?”
“You know it.”
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING Del tried to figure out a way to work “astronomical twilight” into a sentence, but didn’t think anyone would actually care. Still, the information was interesting. Astronomical twilight was at five twenty-three, when the sun was eighteen degrees below the horizon. It was the moment when the sky first turned light. Civil twilight was when objects became visible to the naked eye. Today that was at six twenty-five. The actual sunrise would occur at six fifty-one.
In terms of the commercial, it meant a 4:00 a.m. start time for the team, with actors ready and in place by six for blocking and walk-throughs.
Controlled chaos didn’t begin to describe what was happening on set. Equipment had to be placed and then checked. He and Maya had already blocked out the scene, frame by frame.