Last week, I blogged about the filming of a commercial outside my office window here in downtown Oakland. This doesn't happen too often, so I pulled out my cellphone camera and documented the event. It turned out the commercial was for a Toyota Camry (or a Toyota dealer in the bay area) and it starred former 49ers quarterback Steve Young...
As it was, it turned out to be much ado about nothing, besides that the Oakland police had to block off Clay Street here in City Center for half-the-day, and the surprising number of people who decided to drive around the barricade that nearly spanned the entire width of the road, just to turn around a couple hundred feet later. (Umm, what did you think the barricade was for?)
The first photo is of the three-plus hours of setup the crew did before filming their first take (Steve Young is in the tan Camry). The second shows an industry secret: soak the road so the road looks much darker in the commercial. And the final photo is moments before take one. (Notice the streaking water from the prior soaking and the random passersby that must have frustrated the hell out of the director. The filming took place outside the Federal Building in Oakland, and we know how federal employees rush to work in the morning, don't we? That's not nice.)
