Oh, What A Circus #1
5:50pm A bit of a crowd had gathered to watch day one of the shooting of the new Sony Bravia advert, but not as much as I had thought there might be given the publicity from the Evening Times yesterday. I wanted to get a wide view of all the explosives throwing paint up onto the tower block, so I mounted my camera on the tripod and remained quite far back. After chatting with some local kids (they wanted to look through the camera’s viewfinder), I decided I should really move in closer.
6:18pm This was the scene from closer in.
The waiting crowds
Canon EOS 350D, EF-S 18-55 USM @ 18 | ISO 200 | Av | 1/320s f9.0 +1/3
I had no idea what was going to be happening or when. And then I became unhappy with this position and decided to move. Of course, my heart was in my mouth as I moved further round – just in case they let rip while I was moving!
very good pics, i like the way u got the shot of the man
Comment by karl — Sunday, January 14, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Great pics – glad I found your site. I read somewhere that this was the most expensive TV commercial ever made although I believe more money was spent on relocating families during filming and repairing the damage afterwards than making the actual film. The total bill was around £16m ($32m). Scott
Comment by Scott — Tuesday, August 21, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Hi Scott – Thanks for your comments. As I understood it, no families were relocated. The two blocks which were “painted” were already empty and each has now been demolished, so presumably they didn’t require cleaning. Adjacent residences were covered in white netting (as can be seen in several of my shots) to protect them from the worst of any drifting paint spray. It was reported that a team of about sixty people worked for five days to clean up the mess left from the water-based paint. Additionally, the producers laid on several events for the residents to make up for the inconvenience. I recall hearing of a party in the local community centre and a trip to the seaside. I can’t see any of that amounting to a significant amount of the budget.
While it’s not too obvious, there was some post production CGI carried out – I’m sure the cost of that would have exceeded the cleaning costs, etc.
I don’t recall ever hearing a figure, but £16m does seem pretty high…
Comment by Gary — Tuesday, August 28, 2007 at 2:18 pm