This is the story about a girl named Lucky my weird weekend where I randomly became an extra for an Indonesian perfume commercial.
On Friday, a friend contacted me asking if any of us bules wanted to be a model in a commercial the following day. It would be a super long day (it was supposed to be from 3:30 pm to 1:30 am, but ended up being 11 am to midnight) and we would each make about 100 bucks. We all decided it would make for a good story, but sadly found out that the producers were only looking for males. Sorry Anika and Ruth.
After 2 hours of traffic on the way there, we made it to a driving range that had an open-air building. This would be the setting for the commercial. After hanging around for a couple hours, we came to find out several things, including:
- The premise of the commercial was that we were in a nightclub, and the main girl somehow seduces the main guy with her perfume while everyone was dancing around them.
- There were actual (amateur) models in this shoot who came from far away places like Brazil and the Ukraine. All of them were 2 feet taller than me and wearing very small dresses. I may or may not have fallen in love and stared excessively at the main girl, who’s name was Kyra. The main guy was also a flawless human being.
Because it was open-air, there was no air conditioning and therefore a sweaty mess. That said, it was a pretty impressive setup. The director and cameraman were Australian, and they knew what they were doing (unlike Kyra, who needs to stick to photos and never try to act again).
Most of what us extras did was dance for 15 seconds at a time. We did approximately one thousand 15-second dance scenes (because Kyra kept messing up). I got a cool walking scene, but I was behind the 10 foot tall girls in their 2 foot heels, so I probably won’t get much camera time in the actual commercial, which is just too bad for the perfume company.
I asked Jason to take a picture of me, but it doesn’t quite do justice to what the set actually looked like. There were smoke machines, disco balls, and colored lights, etc. that made it look relatively good.
Notice how much shorter I am than the girls in front of me.
Oh yeah, and this whole big production was done for a perfume that looks like this. A little cheap, pink plastic bottle that belongs in a teenage girl’s room, not a nightclub.
Hopefully this commercial ends up on Youtube, because I really want to see it and be famous.