Rough cut of So.Padre Commercial Spot

Here is the rough cut of the commercial the family shot in South Padre Island in May. I still do not know when it is supposed to play in the Houston area but a friend did say they saw it the other day. The color still needs to be adjusted and some of the cuts as well. It looks pretty good, the kids were excited to see it.

Don't Touch That Dial/ Dance Recital

My two tired dancing girls with grandma Lois
and their flowers after the performance.

Zhivanna and her gal pal shaking side to side for the hip hop dance.

They loved these outfits a lot, especially the hats and gloves.

My little mouse Merlova, the smallest of her dance group
doing "Pinky & the Brain" an older cartoon from Nickelodeon.

Here she is my ballerina dancing to the music from
the Mary Tyler Moore TV show. She was again so cute
because she is so small in comparison to the rest of the group.

The tap dancer in yellow, moving to the song "Good Morning".
I love Zhi's expression.

Last Gymnastic Class

Tonight was the kids last gymnastics class for the session. It was an olympics night and the older kids did some routines they were taught and showed off the skill they did. The whole family came out to see them. We were all a little bit tired after just getting back from South Padre for the commercial so it was a bit crazy.

Here you can see Merlova doing her spiderman thing, she loved
hanging upside down.

Akorren with the support of his coach does an front L-sit on the bars.
Looking good!

Zhivanna having a good time stretching with her friends
during the warm up for class.

The girls, coach and their medals.

Akorren and his coach with boys medallion.

Dolphin Boat Shoot

Today after we did the turtle rescue shoot and the pool we got about a 2 hour break and then heading down the road to jump on a Dolphin Boat tour. We only were able to catch up and see 2 dolphins. The cool part of it was that the camera crew (and us) were allowed to ride on the front of the boat, they took several images of us looking at the dolphins, our expressions with the wind in our faces, looking out in the distance, etc. The water got a bit bumpy and the kids enjoyed the swells of the waves, with a lot of giggles and splashes on the sides of boat.
The girls were wide awake and ready for everything, Akorren on the other hand, was now feeling the wear of going and going for the 2 days of work and shots. The other cool part of this day was the crabs and star fish the kids got to hold for part of the commercial. Akorren held a male and a female blue crab and the girls got to touch star fish and hermit crabs. This was our last set of shots for our portion of the commercial. After it was done we headed back to the hotel for a little rest, packing and then a dinner out followed by the long drive back to Houston. It was truly a wonderful experience for us.

The Beach

So here are the kids, being inspired by Walters' work decide to make a sand castle too. Andrew loved it and jumped in and started to video what they were doing. I had to catch the camera man in action, for posterity sake. I like this clip because I was able to show some of the other people who were a part of making this commercial happen; the man in the white hat is Dirk and he was the Creative Director. He works at The Atkins Group .
He made me proud to be a mom when he said how wonderfully well behaved my kids did for the shooting. He said his kids at that age would not had done as good, and that we did a really great job. I was beaming, to say the least!

Sand Castles & the beach

I was on the beach around 7 AM today to shoot some solo (mom walking on the beach scenes), it was fun, just me with my cup of coffee and the production guys. They were funny and really great to work with. Andrew, Peter, Greg, Ryan, and Dirk (the man in charge). It was hard to find time to take pictures or video so I did what I could in between takes.
Here you see the master sand castle builder Amazin Walter and his apprentice at work. They were making a sand castle for us to use in the shot. The joke was that they would shoot Glenn with a shovel in his hand looking proud, then a cut to the kids and I in awe, then cut to the castle, then us again and then the castle with the 'real builders' working on it. It should come out great. I did not want the kids to ruin all of Walter's work so I had to make sure they knew not to touch it. It was a incredible to watch him work with his tools to create this art out of sand and water.
The girls thought it was neat and Akorren and Glenn were all into it. I hope the shot came out well, it was a fun one to do. Walter was heading out to New York later that day to create some other sand art for an event, I am sorry I did not get his autograph. He did hand me his card. I will see if I can get him to sign a photo for two for us after I print out the shots I have of him with the kids at the beach. This was an awesome way to start out second day of shooting!
The plan was to have us do some pool stuff but the sun was not cooperating, so they said go upstairs and change for the turtle sanctuary shots. So off we went.

Our 1st shoot, the Tatto shop

The location of our first shoot. It was a fun place the kids got to get a tattoo if they wanted one. Merlova of course refused to get one.

Akorren and Zhivanna show off their tattoos for the camera.

Andrew and the crew shoot the scene where Akorren gets his cobra tattoo put on. It was cool!

Glenn and Zhivanna prepare for their shot of looking through the book to pick out a tattoo.

Andrew had Akorren in front of the camera just to set up the first shots. Akorren did a great job of taking directions and putting in a good effort to act and be excited about the tattoos. He had to pretend to want to get a real "bad" tattoo by pointing to it on the wall and Glenn had to make "No Way" dad-like reactions to what Akorren picked out. It was a cute scene and hopefully it will make the final cut of the commercial when they edit it all together. Glenn had fun with it.