So, You Want to Be a TV Commercial Model

This is an article I read in the Philippine Daily Inquirer a few weeks ago. Some parts made me laugh. Thought I'd share. ~ Fran


So, you want to be a TV commercial model
Don't hesitate just because you're ugly, this is your guide

By Ma. Dulce V. AristorenasContributor
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: August 09, 2008

MANILA, Philippines - I was in advertising for 25 years as senior producer and broadcast manager for Ace Saatchi and Saatchi, McCann Erickson and Lowe Worldwide.
Having established my credentials, believe me.
Let’s start at the end, which is a very good way to start (Maria in “The Sound of Music”).
The shooting is 60-percent waiting time. Even Steven Spielberg says so (Time Magazine). That’s why the big stars have trailers in Hollywood. That’s why Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie fell in love: There was so much waiting time, they decided to share a trailer.
If you’re patient and you know how to crochet, you can be a talent and please don’t expect a trailer. We have none anywhere in the Philippines (unless it’s a foreign film shoot by Jun Juban.)
Now, I start from the beginning so you don’t get depressed. This is the happy part. (Don’t quote me on this.)
I had brilliant head casters, such as Efren de José (he cast Gabby Concepcion and Albert Martinez in Close-Up toothpaste when they were nobody so they became somebody!); and Myra Mendoza (who was so pretty that the caster was cast as a Camay Girl when she was already 26 years old—she looked only 16!)
(Postscript: Myra later married her partner in the TV commercial. Now, do you believe me about waiting and Brangelina?)
Before, casters of ad agencies would walk the streets of Makati and Malate at night hoping to see a real cute guy or a one-of-a-kind pretty girl. But when the casters approached a stunning boy or girl, the talents thought they were “picking” them up!

Different
Today, it’s different. There are big casting agents with corporate names. You better get into these agents if you think you’re beautiful, with nice hair that blows with the wind in one block without any strand of hair askew. You can also get in as a nice chubby girl, a beautiful baby or just a simple mother and father in their late 20s or early 30s. These are for the baby commercials that need good-looking parents because the baby’s own parents are ugly.
Well, after 25 years in advertising, I do not have the time to be polite. If you’re a good-looking guy, go in, too. They might get you for a beer commercial or an underwear TV boy. Wow!
That’s good money especially if you’re in the billboard along Edsa! Do you know that the latest commercial of Becks (David Beckham, Husband of Posh—got it now?) is for Emporio Armani with two billboards showing him wearing his baby suits?
One billboard of him with boxers (vertical billboard) as long as 21 floors and a jock (horizontal billboard) on a bridge. I am waiting for the statistics of cars bumping into each other because the women who looked at the billboard would “Uummm!” and the male drivers would cry when they saw Becks’ bump.

Freelance casters
Okay, back to the Manila scene. Now, agencies don’t have casters anymore: they hire freelance casters who are given the casting brief and they contact the talent agencies for what the casting brief says—a pretty but chubby woman, early 20s, and a cute chubby man, same age. Deodorant commercial.
The really savage ones are the girls for the whitening cream and the shampoos. All of them look alike, you don’t know which whitening cream or shampoo they are endorsing! But that’s not the caster’s problem.
First, the whitening cream. Can’t cast celebrities because they are naturally what they are. They can’t say they got white because of a cream!
So go to a talent agency for whitening cream if you are mestiza, Chinese or accidentally white because your father played around. Never mind, you’re paid so much you can go to Harvard. And besides, you’re all over the city: Billboards on Edsa higher than Kris Aquino’s, in Mandaluyong Bridge or Parañaque!
And you’re seen on TV every show breaks, which irritates the viewers but they are forced to watch anyway and, at the end, they believe you. So next day, they buy your cream and the sales surge.

Hair commercial
The hair/shampoo commercials are more complicated. They get a woman whose hair is pretty good. But more than that, one with a beautiful face so that even when she turns with her hair swinging in one piece, she looks good on a one-fourth profile or on a direct profile.
Who cares about the hair? That hair is managed by two men in blue skin suits tying her hair with blue poles and making her move. They twist her hair and let it go by the pole. The hair is beautiful and moves in one piece.
When they get to the computer graphics, the blue men are cut out, and so are the poles. The woman and her hair look fantastic when the CG puts gleaming spots on the hair and any stray hair is erased.
You want to be a hair talent? Sure. Go to a caster or talent agent. But be prepared to wait, wait, wait and be manipulated by poles again and again by two mysterious blue Batmans without the cape.
Sometimes, the ad agency just can’t find the right man or woman here in Manila to launch their new product. So the talent agent calls Bangkok for a semi-Caucasian man/woman. Boy, they are paid huge amounts. Never mind, the client says, she looks different from all the other women on TV.
That’s the key. You have to look different! Remember the Surf Wais na Misis and her mom-in-law? They don’t look any different from ordinary folks, but they are different because of what they do: How compliant and gentle the wife is, and how the mom-in-law looks like the bad wolf in “Little Red Riding Hood.”
To this day people remember them even if the mom-in-law insists on radio that sachet is pronounced sashit. Then your market listens because they look like them! Complicated? That’s the math of advertising.
So if you look different like a simple tindera, go to the talent agent! If you look like a Grade 4 girl who loves to drink milk, go to the talent agent. So with good-looking dads, moms and moms-in-law. Don’t hesitate because you’re ugly. Just look at “Ugly Betty.” I rest my case.
What if you have a special talent like hiphop dancing, ballet, ice skating? Go to the talent agents. You’ll never know when they’ll need one for a vitamin commercial.

Acting
Next, do you know how to act? If not, forget it, and stop wasting our time. If the storyboard of the TVC calls for a character actor who breathes acting, the talent agents prey on stage actors. The stage actors grab it because, at last! A huge paycheck! No more starving actors!
But if it’s just a simple girl who’s a snob and then rides the car of a stranger boy because his car is cool, you can get ordinary people if your caster works hard enough.
And, not to worry, there’s an assistant director (AD) and a final casting session where the AD coaches you on the fine art of acting for TV. If you fail, go to print ads that don’t make you move or talk.
Now back to the spirited world of casting.
Casters really, really scrape the dust to get what the ad agency needs. Marge Reyes and Zeny White are the ones I trust.
And don’t get involved in talent agents’ fights. Don’t sign an exclusivity clause with one talent agent. You lose the opportunity to get cast by others.
You still want to be a TV talent? Of course!
Fame and money are calling and they are hard to resist. Like Ice Cream and chocolate syrup. “Uuummmm!” just like Becks.

Join in
If you do get chosen by the ad agency and client, jump with your two hands in a fist and crumple your face like Michael Jackson’s before the 10th face lift and scream Yes!
Tell all your friends and relatives and officemates, but don’t tell your mom unless the TV commercial is done, because mothers don’t understand why five late nights are needed for roping your hair with arnis sticks. Just keep quiet.
There are final casting calls where you are presented with several guys who fit you. Uuuu.. The cutie is chosen and you’ll be doing a really hard commercial together. And when you sit down beside each other during the shoot breaks (you cannot lie down because your makeup will be spoiled and the client paid half a million to the makeup artist because she studied in the USA)…and the cutie tells you how scrumptious you look on the playback TV monitor, you realize that... You have to widen your vocabulary for instances in life like this.
Hey! You’re shooting now! We’ve completed the casting!
One more thing before you go looking for a talent agent. Casting in advertising is a Mafia, like the “Sopranos” and “The Godfather.”
But don’t be scared. It is a Mafia of intelligence, with an eye for beauty and with good business sense. YOU are a product they want to sell and they will think of ways you’ve never known in your life just to sell YOU.
Did I tell you that talent agents get a percentage of your talent fee? That’s okay. They sell you. Just don’t join the Mafia.
Be happy and honest knowing that you’ll make it.
I am a talent for a TV commercial! Yess! (Don’t forget the crumpled Michael Jackson face)!