Ad Break (Hey It's June!)

 

 

 Here's an Ocado ad I shot last November. That's right, this blog's a cough and a spit archive too now. Although I didn't even have to do that. It was my first interaction with an animated character: off camera is someone wafting a large piece of card to simulate a potentially self-aware articulated table. As with my first advert I play a dad (although you can't see our kid on the stairs). I'm sure my moustache was a factor in the casting, even though dads haven't really sported moustaches since the eighties. Nostalgia, as Don Draper says, is subtle but potent. The following day I flew to Bulgaria to push a child in a dinghy through a mock up of a flooded town for Deutsche Telekom, but I can't find that online. 

 

 The moustache was still around when I shot this ad in April, although who knows whether or not "John" is a dad? Maybe he's from Head Office in Frankfurt. Maybe he's a cannibal. It's a strong look, whatever he is. I love it. Some of these people had to sing "English Country Garden" for eight hours.

 

 Miming the piano is June Hudson. This is very under-dressed for June. The director had used her a lot, and he wasn't alone. One advert she had done called for her to jump out of a aeroplane strapped to a parachutist. She's in her eighties. It was her first experience of skydiving. 

 Before doing adverts June taught Science Fiction Costume Design at the Univerty of Redlands in California. Before that she was Head Costume Designer on the original no-budget "Doctor Who". Anyone who has been to Angels' costume warehouse in Hendon will probably know her work...