We wowed 'em in Boise - again!

In December of 2021, I was one of five actors hired to play a family in a series of commercials for an Idaho credit union.  We were flown from our various home cities to Boise for what proved to be a gloriously happy week.  We actors bonded immediately, would go out for meals after working and talk for hours.  The crew and production staff were friendly and professional, the pay was fantastic, and in every way this proved to be my best on-camera experience in a 60 year acting career.  When the week of shooting was over, we actors all fantasized, without daring to expect it, that we might be brought back someday for another round of commercials.

And we were!  I've just returned from Boise redux.  It was a wonderful reunion, and another mostly good working experience.  The five of us fell immediately in love again.  We were housed at the same very nice motel, a lot of the crew and staff were familiar, and we had the chance to enjoy summer in Boise.

There were difference in this experience, though.  The shooting schedule was much shorter, only two days, and it turned out there were some complications.  For one thing, the producers had decided that the 'family' would get a dog.  A sweet, cute idea, and a sweet, cute puppy named Buster was hired for the role.  He was trained, and his trainer was on set to work with him, but he was also a puppy, with a puppy's energy and curiosity.  For one shot, I was asked to scoop him up in my arms and deliver a line to camera.  He wasn't huge, maybe 25 pounds, and I could certainly lift him with no problem, except when he decided to lie flat of the floor.  But often when I lifted him, he would wiggle, lick my face, look around at everyone, maybe give a little 'woof'.  This meant the shot had to be retaken quite a few times.  At one point, I was asked to hold him in my arms, squat down, and then stand straight up into the camera's view.  Thank goodness I've done a lot of exercising in my life, because this mini shot asked a lot of my thighs and arms.

Another new wrinkle was the producers' decision to have each of the characters shoot a Tik Tok video.  Mine was first, and it was a bit of a challenge.  I was asked to hold the phone/camera up high at a certain angle while I walked and spoke my lines, but I could only see the back of the phone, and so couldn't really tell if my face was properly in frame.  Also, I had to memorize on the spot some lines I had assumed would be voiceovers, and it took a few takes to get those right.  A lot of different versions of this video were shot, and I have to assume the producers got what they wanted, maybe enough good moments from each take so they could cobble together a completed video.  Each of the actors had at least one Tik Tok video to film, but some of what had been planned finally had to be dropped for lack of time.

Still, even with all that, it was another wonderful experience, made happier by the fact that the producers talked in our presence about the possibility of bring the 'family' back again in a year or so.  Wouldn't that be a hoot?