I am sitting at my desk enduring the second week working here interning at Ogilvy Singapore (elite advertising agency). the very fact that i am writing on here must show how useless i am, they have even stopped giving me photocopying work!
ALTHOUGH, yesterday, i was offered the chance to go to a commercial shoot, and i was like Yes! so at 3.45 we went to Pasir Ris by taxi, to some very
dodgy looking flats and stopped outside a minimart, they told me to run in and buy some marlboro reds so i rushed in and out. They told me 'sorry, but we need Marlboro lights instead.' I rolled my eyes and stalked back inside (this is not a random detail - i swear it is part of the story!).
They had left the taxi, and i gradually came to realise that this was the location of the shoot. I was told i must stay outside because there ‘Wasn’t enough room’. so i sat there with a singaporean who told me he had already been waiting 30 mins because his friend had told him to come, but he had no idea either.
Waiting there forever, I came to a startling realisa
tion. Singaporeans, the ones with chinese ancestors in paticular, have no age. honestly, it was stunning now that i looked around. the women walking past me could be thirteen or thirty! the only thing that gave it away was the way they dressed. it is obvious with europeans, their skin quality degenerates and they have obvious lines on their face, not to mention the obvious weight increase (tee hee. Nah, it won't happen to me, what are you talking about?), but the women milling round me on the street were all slim enough to be models. unfortunately for them the asian genes has a different surprise waiting for them - female pattern hair-loss. (the truth-i swear!)
I'm sorry, i thought this picture was a grumpy woman in a wig.i got bored and went to go look in the minimart. i saw a grim reaper staring at me amid a crowd of technicans! One of them noticed me and hurried me out looking as though she had seen Grim herself. I was starting to peice together what was going on. Having been a ‘just for laughs’ enthusiast for some time, i had already seen the security monitor trick. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Bf-7PxQ894
Just then they told me they were ready for me. Iwas handed ten dollers as a prop (which by the way, would not be enough to buy them here thanks to tax!) and told to go in and buy the ciggies. I didn’t want to dissapoint them by telling them i already knew what they were going to do when they had put so much effort into it! So instead i gave them a show.
I walked through to the lonely minimart casually. I ‘happened’ to glance at the screen and froze when i saw grimmy behind me. He started walking towards me. I spun round and obviously due to computer sorcery he was not there. I looked freaked and backed away, grabbing the cigarettes on the way. I was greeted by the team laughing at my reaction and telling me that if they had told me about their 'trick' they wouldn’t have got such a great response. I smiled at their naivity. after all, who would be scared? i am amazed i convinced them. so that was it. my great acting debut.
After that they ‘let me in on their secret’ showing me the split screen they used, on one side showing recorded footage of grim and the other side showing real time. Unfortunatly if anyone walked accross the divide, they would seemingly dissapear into a parrallel universe.
Me and the team spent the next three hours staking out the minimart in a little back room, a running tab on the counter fuelling us with snacks and coke zero. we had some people outside regulating the people who came in which must have immediatly put them on edge, and we had to keep telling the shopkeeper to stop being so friendly. We got a few good victims. One of the team got a few people driven all the way down from the office to ask for ciggies, only one out of four worked and it is a 40 minute trip down there! Shows how valuble they think their juniors time is! after they were done with, they were sent away none the wiser!
Eventually a group of teenagers showed up laughing at the whole thing and finding the hidden cameras, we left, very suspiciously, a whole group of people coming out the back room of the minimart. We left them still staring at themselves in the camera.
That was the end of my adventure. I had to leave the others pretending I was going to have nightmares thanks to them and let them enjoy their joke, little knowing that the joke was on them.
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