Working Student

In my decades in the advertising industry and the academe, I've experienced many cross overs. Simply put, I've had a lot of former students who have become work mates.

Some of my them have been colleagues in the same agency, suppliers for productions, even clients.

And here's a new addition to the list.

Last month, I had the cool experience to work with Jem as a commercial model for one of our recently launched materials.

Jem was my advertising students, and I remember her as one of the strategic and creative thinkers of her batch. Back then, I knew she'd end up in advertising. And she did, but instead of behind the scenes, she's right in front of the camera as one of the familiar faces in commercials.

Times like these make me so happy to be in the advertising profession.

Hand-yman

Fun fact: Part of my advertising career is being a hand-talent. So, not only do I make commercials, my hand appears in commercials!

It started in the 90s, during my first job in Adformatix.

During a print shoot, we were having difficulty directing a talent on how to handle a capsule. To expedite things, I went in front of the camera and showed the talent how to do it. 

Suddenly, the photographer told me that I should just do it myself. And he photographed my hand for that print ad. And that began my "hand-talent" career.

Since then, I've appeared on print ads for a mobile phone (holding the newest model), print ads for a beer brand (holding a bottle of beer), a television ad for a cigarette brand (holding an unlit cigarette, because it's not allowed to advertise a lit cigarette,) among others.

Last week, our latest TVC for Gardenia came out. And guess who's hand was featured there?

Yes, that's me! (My hand, at least.)

It was the same story. While showing the talent how it should be done, our director told me that my hand was what he was looking for in the shot.

And just like that, the role was, uhm, hand-ed to me.

My nephew is larger than life!

He's actually billboard sized!

I saw 2 billboards of Kurt in downtown Davao:

And some at the airport:

I wonder if he'll be mobbed when he goes there.

Ad it up!

Last night, another commercial we shot last January finally aired!

This was a fun commercial to shoot. And even more fun to watch. (That's because I played an extra!)

Here's to more commercials in 2016!

Add "voice talent" to my resume...

I've been in Advertising for more than a decade. Not only do I create and teach advertising, the recent years saw me fast becoming PART of advertising.

While listening to "Holding back the years" in the background, I'm trying to create an MTV-ish flashback to recall and pinpoint my first ad appearance...

There was the Promil print ad where I appeared as a person with Above Average IQ. (That was a demotion, i'm a GENIUS! Mwahahaha!)

My hand had a load of commercial appearances: Dermalin, Palmolive Soap, Sony Ericsson.

There was that memorable top shot of me for the Philip Morris poster. I was supposed to be an acoustic artist, but I didn't know how to hold a guitar. Ariel had to coach me and after that shoot, I knew how to make a D chord.

My back was featured in a brochure for Synergymed. This project will forever hold a special place in the hearts and minds of Erwin, Ria and myself. Who can forget Kabashima-san.

There was the first TV ad for Texas Chicken where you can actually see me! (That is if you pause the television set and try to single out one person in the crowd. Harharhar!)

Summary of talent accomplisments:

TVC talent - check
Hand talent - check
Back talent - check
Full body talent - check

Today, I add "voice talent" to this list of accomplishments.

Being the only person who can speak tagalog in this agency, whenever a tagalog TVC or tagalog edit needs to be done, they zero in on me and send me to the nearest recording studio to do my "thang." Initially, this didn't sit well with me since I think my voice is totally dorky. The more I listen to myself, the more i'm convinced that I sound like my brother Biboy. (Which isn't so bad. But over the phone, Biboy sounds much better than me.)

Ergo, during my debut as a voice talent, I was very reluctant. But then again, they just want me for timing purposes, and not for my golden voice.

So there I was, at Touches for the audio recording. It was weird to be on the other end of the court. For years, I've been watching voice talents do their thing while I was comfortably seated inside the audio engineer's booth. Now, the voice talent is yours truly, and my officemate is on the other end.

Good news: it only took 4 takes, then I nailed the lines. The only challenge was when this was the direction given: "Can you sound more like a little girl?" My mental response was: "I'm a 32 year old man. How can I sound like a little girl."

After listening to the playbacks, I suddenly realized that my voice wasn't as awful as I thought it was. Yes, I still sound a bit like Biboy, but it was a very good kind of Biboy sound.

Hmmm... I think I'll get a hang of this.