Princess of Tides

Location: Sandringham & South Melbourne
Date: December 2012

Not being what you'd call a 'boat person' I don't expect to do a TV commercial on a sea going vessel. But here I am on a luxury cabin cruiser, just off Sandringham, filming an ad for a boat show. And although the shoot is what you might call 'Economy Class' compared with the 'A Deck' Slater & Gordon TVC (my one minute audition is filmed on an i-phone, I’m met by a crew of three on location and lunch is a salad roll at the kiosk), it's a day's paid acting work and I'm not complaining! Plus, I get to spend a lovely afternoon in the sunshine!

Being directed by three people at once is probably not what I’d call ideal but my new onscreen spouse and I go with the flow (like that little pun, do you?) and do numerous takes, including a whole new script written on board the cruiser. I start out saying my line a particular way, change it several times to suit the 'directors' and then when I go back to doing it the way I did the first time, the agency guy says 'Perfect!' (Hubby and I have a little chuckle about it later.)

This outdoor adventure is followed by the decidedly indoor enterprise of recording two radio commercials for the same campaign in the coolest (in both senses of the word!) studio I have ever seen. Even the toilets at this place are funky. And it's great experience! (The radio ad I mean, not using the toilets.)

Anyway, the boat show commercials will air in a few weeks, not too far behind my previous effort, which finally made it onto the small screen a few weeks ago, or so I’m told. (I haven’t actually seen it.) It might look I've been busy but in reality the period between shoots is over six months. Hopefully it will also look like I have sea legs. Ah, the world of TV is but an illusion…