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-	Confessions of an Ad-Man VII: Commercial ends up in the air instead of on the air

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There was the time when we spent three days shooting a television commercial for a large grain company. When we were all ready to get into the smoke filled van and head for the airport and our flight home, the director realized we didn’t have a sunrise shot. We were in a little town in Saskatchewan which consisted of a grain elevator, a small general store which was also the post office and liquor store, and several houses.

The problems with getting a sunrise shot were many and varied:

- it was well past sunrise

- it was a one hundred mile drive to our hotel

- we had already checked out of our hotel

- our plane reservations were for later that night

- there were far too many of us to sleep in the van

- The grain elevator office was heated but it was so small we would have had to sleep standing up

- the temperature was -23 Fahrenheit so sleeping on the ground was not an option

- we were all totally sick of this commercial after three days of shooting

Our director did what directors do when they are stymied. He paced and stroked his chin. Suddenly he froze in mid-pace and mid-stroke.

“He’s on point,” said the sound man.

“F***, it’s cold,” said the make up artist.

The director whirled on us, an action that made him look like some grotesque ballerina doing a pirouette, and I honest-to-God expected him to say, “Eureka!” Instead he said, “Sunset!”

We looked at him in awe. It was a brilliant, if obvious, concept. Make it a sunset shot. The damn shot was pivotal to the commercial, because, I, as the grain elevator manager, was supposed to be leaving the grain elevator at sunrise. I would then drive to the city to take grain elevator manager training classes with other grain elevator managers. Please, no comments about the fact that grain elevator managers do not live in their elevators but in houses like normal folk. Logistically, the shot should have been me, leaving my house at sunrise to . . . well, you know the rest.

Also, if we took the sunrise shot at sunset, instead of sunrise, the lighting on the elevator would be more dramatic. Everyone quickly bought that rationale. Only the locals would know that the sun actually rose behind the elevator, not facing it. Most of them didn’t have cable TV anyway, so they’d likely never see the commercial..