"O" hits the big screen

Last Friday, my last official day with AFFORD/UHMG, was spent mostly at Protea (the hotel across the street from the office), watching Studio One (a production company from Nairobi, Kenya), ZK (one of our ad agencies), an actor, an actress, and the AFFORD/UHMG team shoot a tv spot for condom "O".

It’s the second time I’ve been useless on set now (the first being for the filming of "The Road to Mpumudde"), and I love seeing how it all plays out. Favorite behind-the-scenes moments this time around included trying to find a male actor that would actually appear in a condom commercial (most don’t want the association), trying to get the “O” actor’s fee down to something more realistic that the initial $10,000 he demanded (we apparently forgot to negotiate the terms of reference beforehand), watching the "O" actor get a caffeine buzz off of Red Bull (which he drank in place of Scotch), and figuring out how to cover up the emergency exit sign on the door so it looked like a home rather than a hotel (solution: hang a suit jacket over the door). Ah, the life of stars.