Joe Fiorello worked on a TV commercial for the Nikon Coolpix S8200 with Wang Leehom.
Here’s a behind the scenes style version of the commercial.
Full Story:
For this commercial, they told me that they wanted to go for an “Ocean’s Eleven” vibe and I was cast as one of Wang Leehom’s entourage for it as we strutted through the streets of Macau.
I was pretty excited about this gig for two reasons, working with an international superstar like Wang Leehom and also because they insisted that I wear this new hat that I had brought to the audition. More on the hat later.
I didn’t realize until I started chatting with him that Wang Leehom is originally from Rochester, New York. We chatted a bit about growing up in NY and the watching Yankee games. I had actually visited Rochester right before moving to Hong Kong to work on a film by Chris Seaver called “Teenape and the Monster Nazi Apocalypse“, but that is a story for another blog entry.
With the whole “Ocean’s Eleven” vibe, I quickly started to get the idea that I was meant to be the “Sammy Davis Jr” to Wang Leehom’s Frank’s Sinatra. Besides me being easily the shortest member of the crew, I kept getting directions to be “bigger” with my movements, part because of my stature compared to my fellow castmates, but also because, according to the director, I was supposed to be the “big personality” of the group. He mentioned about my hat in his reasoning for this as well.
So, I tried to give him bigger. Our walk through Macau was being shot in super slow motion and the over exaggerated movements would be needed to register on cam. Still it felt weird trying to be “big” when everyone else was directed to walk like it was a fashion catwalk.
So take one, I swing my arms more.
Director, “cut! I need bigger movement.”
Take two, I do a bit of a pimp walk.
Director, “cut! Bigger!”
Another take, big strides, big swinging arms.
Director “BIGGER!”
I contemplated giving aerial jazz hands the next take, but I figured that would look insane. I go to Wang Leehom and said to him “the director keeps asking for bigger, I feel like I’m doing everything, but doing a tap dance.” He looks me in the eye and says, “well I guess you better give him a tap dance.”
Next take, I literally tap dance down the street (as best as I can, that is, I’m no Sammy Davis Jr.).
Director, “Cut! YES! Just like that, do that every take from now on!”
As for the hat, well, anyone that knows me knows that I’m a big hat person. This particular pork pie style fedora just happened to be the new prized part of my collection, purchased a couple of days before the audition. And I payed way too much for it, I had thought at the time. I saw it at an I.T. store and it card to me. I was shocked at the price, but I just had to have it.
What’s funny is it was kind of a random stroke of luck that I had brought the hat to the audition in the first place. The agent that got me the casting gave me a single piece of information as to how to prepare for it. “Dress like you’re on vacation.” There’s a lot of gray area and room for interpretation in “dress like you’re on vacation.” So I brought two different types of outfits for the casting, 1) bathing suit, t-shirt, sandals like I’m vacationing at the beach, 2) hiking boots, cargo pants, athletic shirt, like I’m about to hike up a mountain. Now, what was lucky about it is that I just so happened to bring a 3rd outfit with me. I was planning to go see Michael Wong do a jazz show later that evening and didn’t want to trek al the way back home to change into snazzy threads, so I brought my outfit to wear to the jazz show with me.
When I got to the casting, I asked the casting director, so which of these two “vacation” outfits should I wear? The bathing suit and t-shirt or the hiking outfit? She looks at both outfits and it immediately like “neither of these are appropriate for this casting.” Wait what?
The casting director tells me that she doesn’t know what happened, but she told the agent to have every dress cool, like in “Ocean’s Eleven” and everyone has been showing up in shorts and flip flops. I explain to her what the agent told me and she the casting agent looked like she was going to lose her shit. Then she sees the 3rd outfit that I had brought along for going to the jazz show. “What about this outfit?”
“Yeah, I could wear that. Let me fix up my hair too then,” I said.
“Oh no, can you wear that hat too?” she said.
“Sure.”
So I do the casting, take photos in the outfit and she went from “what the fuck is going on here?” to “yes, finally!” It goes well and she’s happy, I’m happy. Suddenly the next guy for casting comes in… and he’s wearing shorts and flip fops. Casting Director is immediately back to “what the fuck?!” It turned out to be a friend of mine who came after me. I told him about the misinformation from the agent and felt bad, lent him my jacket to wear for his casting.
The next day, I got a call from my agent. She says that she was shocked to find that out of everyone she sent to the audition, I was the only one they even considered. I didn’t have the heart to tell her why, especially since, well it’s not every day lady luck shines on me like that day. So after she gives me all the details for the fitting and right before she hangs up, she says “oh, by the way. Be sure to bring the hat.” Part of me still believes that it might have been the hat that got really casted in that role, but hey, who wears it better than me? wink wink
As far as I know, it was only released in Mainland China, and only managed to catch the actual ad once when I was traveling there one time, but I was happy to found that behind the scenes style version of the TVC that was ripped from Youku.