Lights, Camera, Action

Yesterday Owen was having a terrible, no good rotten day. Brent had gone down to the school to deal with the situation and I was left with a sad Owen who didn't think anything could turn his day around.

Getting direction from Chrislyn

Enter Sam stage right. Sam is our Cuso in country support representative and active member of the arts community. He sent me an email telling me a friend was looking for a foreign family to be in a tv commercial. Would our family be willing to help out? It was for Grenada tourism, which is definitely something we support, so we said sure why not! Owen was so excited he was beaming.

Never let anyone tell you things are slow in the Caribbean, some things yes, but not everything. So after receiving the email around three p.m. we found ourselves making arrangements to shoot the next day!

I was greatly relieved to find out it was not going to be walking down a beach or playing in the surf- because I am definitely not ever going to wear a bathing suit on TV! Mercifully the commercial is to promote homestays to Grenadians- programs like Home Away and Flip Key. They wanted to sell not just the financial benefits-- but also the social aspect.

Cameraman hiding in the bushes

Our scenes were the kids playing basketball with our "host" family; an amazing view of the sunset, dominoes, making dinner, and then having dinner. It took about three hours to get a "wrap".  I think all the kids started to get a little tired of doing things over and over, but it will give them a sense of how long it would take to shoot a movie when a 30 second commercial takes 3 hours!

The basketball was hard because most of the time the kids wouldn't get a basket. Also you were supposed to be all smiles and Owen has a take no prisoners way of playing. So his expressions ranged from "You're going down" to "I'm taking you down!"

Of course Patti and I didn't make dinner, Chrislyn had it all prearranged and it was yummy! It was hard to have it presented over and over and not eat it! Finally around 7:00 p.m. we did get to eat, but of course that was filmed too.

We had lots of fun and made some new friends, even snagged a couple of board games from the owner of the house that was used- super nice guy. The Grenada Tourism Authority gave our family a sweet thank you bag with water bottle, pens, spices (of course) and little totes that you could use for groceries! It was a great experience and as Owen noted, now the mean kids will have to see him at home not just at school!!

We continue to feel so grateful to be able to contribute to this beautiful island in unexpected ways.

Both boys worked the lights for indoor shots

Patti and I doing a kitchen shot