IAC DISCUSSION FORUMS

Last week, Animal Planet called me about my Youtube channel, saying they're making a series called MyCatsGoneViral, and could they film the cats for a day sometime?

I said yes, certainly, and they said how about next weds? We're flying a crew over from Canada!!!

so then I started on a 3 day tidy up of my hovel, which ended up in a tidy lounge! Lovely!

They turned up with a single softbox, a reflector, DSLR Canon (forgot to ask which one) and a pretty fancy 3x radio mic and sound recording setup.

There was a 4 person crew - director, cameraman, sound, and camera assistant, who was pretty clued up, and not a gopher.

We started off with interviews, where they asked a variety of questions, for about 20 mins?

Then based on the answers I'd given in the interview, they wanted to film certain types of behaviour of the cats, so that's why they did the interview first.

After the cat filming, I needed to film the intro and outro to my segment (30 min show with 3x10 min segments)

the intro was me coming out of the front door holding one cats, saying "this is Freya, my spoilt little princess" they had the camera on one of those dolly rails on tripods, and tracked towards me as I said it.

Finally for the outro, they had the directors chair sequence, where there is a shot of the cat sitting in a directors chair, with all the tech equipment visible, and again, tracked into the the shot using their Dolly rail setup.

All in all, a fascinating and fun day!

It should be airing in March/April sort of time.

There are some pics on my facebook page, but I don't know if I'm allowed to share them with the public yet...

Nice one Chris.... it just goes to show who watches what...

look forward to seeing this... any gifts for the cats ?

yep! I got sent two puzzle feeders from Nina Ottoson for possible product placement, and the cats got more bits of chicken treats than they've ever had before in a day!
And they slept all evening, which is quite unusual, so they were certainly tired out from all the attention!

"Meowwww wuf wuf"!

Now that's a lovely story Chris....are U gonna make a film about it? If so perhaps U could include a "Pussy Galore"!!! That'd make for wider audience interest I am quite sure!

Must be about 5 years ago now I was approached in a similar way about my dogs....
one was a complete comedian and 'tother actually belonged to my younger son and was an Army dog - with him. (Both wufftas gone to doggy heaven now I'm really sorry to say).

However, it all came to nought when the Telly Viziun folks found that I did not live in a Kennel! (Never mind my "hovel" ---!) Strewth, what did they expect. Buckingham Palace,
I asked?

Cheers, Lee....
P.S: Those Telly people almost drove me "barking mad"!

Interesting photos, chris.

I like the way they set the camera up halfway down your hall so they could get far enough away from you and you far enough away from the background to get some depth to the image (and presumably som shallow DoF). I liked the way they had a softlight (which looked like it had a blue gel on it) pointing onto a reflector to light you to overcome the fact that there was a wall where they'd have liked to put the light. It shows how it's all held together with string and sticky tape! I don't know why you bothered tidying the house. It looked like they made a right mess of it.

What was with the yellow/orange backdrop - were you sat in fromt of that for teh interview?

TimStannard wrote:Interesting photos, chris.
I don't know why you bothered tidying the house. It looked like they made a right mess of it.

It wasn't that bad, and by the time they left, everything had been completely moved back in place, including all the furniture and everything - they couldn't have been more helpful!

TimStannard wrote: What was with the yellow/orange backdrop - were you sat in fromt of that for teh interview?

The reflector shot was for my interview, with the out of focus computer in the background

The backdrop was for the outro - the shot of the cat in the chair, with all the equipment visible - to make it look like a big production - it was a very clever idea, although it took about an hour to setup, and will probably only give them the last 4 seconds of my segment!

Thanks for the info Chris. Hope we get to see it.