Christmas Comes Early
"What do you do every day?" It's a question I've been asked, always politely, throughout my entire career. And it is a fair question. Do I spend all my time in the garden, making recipes, or choosing paint colors? Do I have an army of workers running crazy while I sit back and drink hot cocoa? Do I spend one day a week writing, another filming, another speaking, and another managing my farm?
Honestly, it's a little bit of each of those (with the exception of the hot cocoa. In Arkansas there is a small window of time when it's cold enough to drink hot cocoa.). The average week involves all of those details, but usually there's a little something extra thrown into the mix.
Recently, it was shooting a commercial for my Holiday Collection with Berry Family of Nurseries. Filming is a part of daily life at the Garden Home, but we decided to rent out a studio for a new look for this commercial.
Here are a few things I learned about making commercials:
You have to take your shoes off when walking on an all-white set, otherwise you track dirt onto the set. If you do it correctly, though, the magic of television can turn an empty set into a fully decorated room in the snap of a finger.
It's better to just bring most of the shirts in your closet, because you never know what is "holiday appropriate," especially when it's still 80 degrees outside.
Even a small amount of greenery can get you into the Christmas spirit, especially when the greenery was flown in just that morning from the Cascade Mountains in western Oregon.
It takes a lot of people to make a commercial come together. Luckily, I've got a very talented crew.
Five hours, three cups of coffee, one rented studio, a dozen set changes, 10 different wreaths, and a crew of 8 people later, we had a commercial.
Well, let me rephrase that. We had the footage for a commercial, and now it falls to the editing team back at the office. And I will say this much- I can't wait to see what they produce.
