Yesterday the crew from HGTV came to tape two segments for the fourth season of That’s Clever.  The airdate is TBD, but Season Four will start airing in June, 2007.  What a fun experience!

It was completely different than what I had experienced with the local cable channel.  With Channel 12, it was zoom through, one take.  With the HGTV crew, it was do a step, talk about the step — and you cannot say ‘you’ or ‘we’, you have to say ‘I’.  Being an instructor, I think that was the hardest thing — I kept wanting to INSTRUCT, not talk about how I do it, but show the ‘you’ inside the camera lens, how to do it.  *smack*.  I also found out that while I’m really good at talking through things as I go, ‘off the cuff’, having to remember and recite lines is NOT my forte.  NOPE!  I need a prompter!  LOL!  Celia, one of the segment producers came to my rescue there.  I would go through a process and talk through it in my comfortable way, and she would take notes.  Then, they would do headshots and she would feed me a line.  Look up, say the line, look down – as if you are working on the project as you go.  That worked really well for me.  Thank you, Celia!

I really love how they infuse the artist’s personality into this show.  We did a couple of ‘lockdowns’ featuring my hats, dominos and the materials I use to make the two projects that I think will come off well in the final product. 

The crew was great at taking things and making fun shots of them; from a tower of flowers, to running the camera lens from top to bottom of my paper racks, to the most hysterical moment of the day, when they attempted to make a the little dominos from my bracelet stack and fall.

Brian had the shot all set up from his camera’s point of view, and Celia was trying at first, to push them down with a pen — but her arm was in the shot.  So I suggested that they just blow them down.  Well, the first try, Celia blew a little to hard and the cardstock that they were sitting on sailed off instead with the dominos.  Like a sail on a ship – they were gone!!  It was so funny.  Finally, the paper was TAPED down and perhaps a gentler puff too – and they caught the shot they wanted.

One of the things that I found interesting was the amount of preparation that had to go into masking off logos, trademarks and product names.  The two producers went all through my craft area, putting stickers on things to obscure them.  This, I’m told, is so that the paid advertisers get their time, and there is no free advertising for the products that I’m using to make my crafts.  Everything, from my scanner to my inkpads had little stickers on them.

The same was true for the words I spoke during filming.  Ranger’s Glossy Accents product became ‘a clear-drying, dimensional glue that does not self-level.’  Ok, that is definitely a technical description.  huh???

Joe, the main cameraman, made me feel very at ease.  With 25 years of experience, he gave me lots of tips and basic instruction that helped a lot.  I had simple little confusing moments, like expecting to see a red light come on the camera when he was taping.  He would roll tape and then say, ‘go ahead’ and I always felt caught off guard.  It’s silly, huh?  The ‘audio department’ – was a funny guy from Middletown.  I was chuckling so much at his quick rapport – that I didn’t catch his name!  I did laugh at the two of them, referring to each other as ‘the audio department’ and ‘the video department’.  I said, ‘What am I?  ‘the craft department?’.  They said, no, I was ‘the talent’.  Ooooh that gives you an ego boost!

However, I must say that I was really prepared for the day of filming.  My projects were broken down into step-by-steps, so that we could get through things quickly.  Especially for the smaller project.  I had a tray for the pieces at each phase of development.  That portion of taping went super fast.

Shannon from my local newspaper, the Newtown Bee, came by and took some photographs of the production in process.  She said they are going to do a feature article.  How fun is that?  Otherwise it was ALL QUIET on the set – with Neil taking the kids out for a day of fun.  That was good, because we would pause in filming whenever an airplane went overhead – and that is not something I ever notice on a day-to-day basis.  There aren’t any airports near my house.  Can you imagine how loud my kids would have been?  I’m so grateful that they had a fun day with Daddy, and to Neil for helping me make this happen.  Otherwise both phones were unplugged, and except for three Fedex deliveries (hey, it’s the holidays) – if I’d figured out how to unhook the doorbell they would probably just have knocked anyways.  LOL!

The crew arrived at 8:00am and we powered through the second segment and went for a late lunch around 3:00pm.

My craft area is back to normal – still neat though!  So I guess that isn’t ‘normal’ – but my things are back on my desk and there are stickers all over everything — my little reminders of a fun day of television production.

That’s a wrap!