Thursday 28 July 2011

All that Jazz

Had rehearsal yesterday for a tv commercial, selling what I can only assume is puffer jackets. 

I am required to take off and put on various jackets whilst doing one of choreographed dances. (There's 4 in total) 

Some "great artist" from Taiwan named Bruce that highly resembled the drama teacher from Summer Heights High was teaching me the moves in this poorly air conditioned dance studio. Let me just say he obviously isn't accustomed to this heat. He was dripping with sweat from every inch of his body, and having to swap jackets with him during this dance made me a bit paranoid about catching meningitis..

I'm supposed to be shooting with a chinese girl and according to the director I need to teach her the moves. We fly to Xining for 3 days to shoot on location  heres hoping we don't get a 40 degree day! Nonetheless it should be a fun job.

Below is a video from rehearsal. 



Friday 22 July 2011

Highs and Lows

This week has been full of a lot of highs and lows for me. The castings seem to be dying down for the girls I have only been going to around 1 or 2 a day, and that in turn, results in fewer jobs that can be booked.

On a higher note, I experienced 2 new venues in Shanghai this week. Every Wednesday and Thursday an amazing five star restaurant - The Strip puts on a model dinner where 10 models (first in best dressed) experience a 4 course meal plus drinks on the house. In return we agree to go to one of the most prestigious bars in Shanghai - Mint. Now if the amazing terrace views from The Strip weren't good enough then perhaps the 25m long shark tank at Mint might be somewhat impressive. Looking around I see fish tanks perched next to cow hide couches sitting underneath massive chandeliers. Each table is privately booked out for a small fortune and sprawled with 5L bottles of Belvedere or Grey Goose and buckets of Moet.
View from The Strip


Shark tank at Mint


This week we also had a bit of a move around with the model apartments. More and more models are arriving with no spare beds to put them in so the agency got a new apartment for the boys and the girls now have 2 apartments. Me and my Aussie companion Georgie moved into the boys old apartment yesterday and are very happy about our new living arrangements. We each have our own room and as we are both clean people we don't have to worry about catching all kids of diseases from old food or dirty dishes being left all over the kitchen.



Sunday 17 July 2011

Rockstar

Visited Bar Rouge again on Friday, this is definitely my favourite place in Shanghai so far. The terrace views over the Bund are second to none and the DJ's play great tunes one after another which make it very hard not to dance!
 
View from Bar Rouge
 
Up at 5am today to shoot a catalogue for clothing label Peace Bird with 3 other models.The theme was rockstar 
chic with a hint of hippy. We shot on location at a local club - Mao. The scenes varied from playing in a rock band
on stage to jumping on the couches and drinking beer "backstage". This was my favourite shot, they asked us to
shake up the beer bottles so they would spray everywhere. You can imagine the mess we made, I ended up with 
a face covered in alcohol! Nice way to start a Sunday morning... 
 

On Set

 
In other news, Moby our pet turtle is no longer with us. He passed away last night due to unknown reasons. 
May he rest in peace, poor little guy.

Tuesday 12 July 2011

The taxi experience in Shanghai

Story of my life!

Double Booked

Long day of castings today with alot of waiting around for each. One casting in particular was a show for shoes, where we waited about an hour to be seen and each took turns walking for the client. They picked me and another girl from my agency to stay back. They then did about 3 more culls before asking us to walk one final time before settling on 5 girls (me being one of them). 

Happy having booked the job I go get my things from the van as they had a fitting scheduled for us straight away. Upon my return to the clients office I see theyre on the phone with my booker confirming dates. Turns out im flying to another city for a TVC the same day as the show so am unable to take part.  Highly disappointing!

This is the second time this has happened to me, I go through the long winded process of a casting, book the job only to find im not available. If you ask me they should probably check these things before they pick the models, it would save everyone alot of time..

Sunday 10 July 2011

Had a shoot for an outdoor adventure company M360 with a guy named DK and little boy from my agency this week.

The setting was in a forest not far from the city, when we arrived a little buggy picked us up and took us through the park to a more secluded area. The client had various settings for the shoot including doing yoga in the woods, me and DK playing with our "son" and drinking champagne, pretending to BBQ some food and pulling ourselves on a platoon through some very questionable water.

For the last look the assistants were trying to make it back to land and had to cross via 4 platoons. The first guy crossed a bit too quickly perhaps showing off a bit and ended up in the lake (twice), phone and all.  The scene resembled something you would see on an episode of Wipeout, it was priceless!


On a completely different note my room mate Maryna bought a turtle off the side of the road which we named Moby. He's the new pet of the house and so adorable. Maryna was told by a few people that they've only lasted 3 days as pets because they're not carefully taken care of, so she's determined to be a good mother and takes good care of him with visits to the park each morning and night so he can stretch his tiny little legs. He's been here for 6 days now, so far so good!

Sunday 3 July 2011





It's been a busy week in Shanghai for me. I had 7 jobs ( 2 catalogues and 5 shows ) in the space of 5 days. 6 of the jobs were for the same client - Dazzle. They do womenswear, very cute clothes alot of colour and layering. The photoshoot was for their Winter 2011 catalogue. I shot with 2 other girls, one from Poland and another from Australia. The shoot went for about 8 hours which isnt very long compared to what I've heard about some girls doing 14 hour shoots. That's not to say that I wasn't ready to finish by the end of it. Believe it or not but its tiring getting dressed and undressed 100 times over. Especially when youre wearing 3 layers of winter clothes and were in the middle of summer. Any girl that likes to shop would understand..after 4 hours of trying on clothes at shopping mall you usually get fed up and go home.
The second shoot was for puffer jackets. Now the temperature outside was around 35degrees and humity around 90% the girls I was shooting with had started at 5:30am and shot outside until 10:30 where they meet me in the studio to then shoot the rest of the collection until 5pm.
One the of girls had a fever and cracked under the pressure from the heat and exhaustion. She burst into tears on set and ended up being sent home. So that left me and another girl to shoot the rest of the line. It was good fun there were 2 girls and 2 guys. We would take turns shooting individually then would pose together as couples and as a group.
Not sure whats on the cards for work this week yet. We go into the agency each Monday to collect our pocket money and check the calendar for any new jobs we've booked. Apart from that it will be castings as per usual.