Miss Philadelphia, Francesca Ruscio, was a real pleasure to meet.  PHL17 used her in a series of promos for our HOTLIST campaign.  We shot it some really cool places throughout the city and I was really happy with how the shots turned out that make up the final. You can see the final here, But since I did not edit, write, or produce this one, my favorite takeaways from this day were the were two.  First, the time Francesca took to give my niece a hello video. We had a long day and talked a lot about our similar Italian families. When I told her my niece was one of my favorite people, she did this video which I thought was just super cool of her… my whole family is now a huge fan.

My second favorite video take away was the “Blooper.” We set up at rush hour on Broad Street in front of City Hall to get Francesca in the median with City Hall behind her. We wanted a very shallow depth of field and shot with a Canon SLR.  This made us have to focus manually as she walked which was quite difficult.  In one of the takes, the Philly Fire Dept rolled by and had some fun.

The other epic part of the day had nothing to do with the shoot, or little.  For the last shot of the day, Francesca wore the outfit you see above.  As you can see from the blooper– LITERALLY, head turning. So in addition to camera, part of our task that day was just keeping interested parties from walking into shots or ruining audio, especially in the very public Broad Street median shot.  People honked, whistled and even walked up to say hello.

I thought this shoot would be over at 2:00pm. So at 6:00pm when I was still on the Broad Street median, manually focusing shots with my trusted number two at PHL17 Ryan Wismer– needless to say I was pretty much “done.”  So when a person from the street started walking toward the camera and yelling– “I know you!”  I had very little patience– until he said the magic words–

“I KNOW WHAT RAIN LOOK LIKE!!”

This was a reference to my Peter Cheeseman spot.  And even though I was not in Cheeseman facial hair or gear– the guy recognized me. And that was the first time that ever happened to me.  So what if 1,000 people recognized Miss Philly–  ONE recognized me as Peter Cheeseman and was super cool.

Miss P  1,000
Cheeseman 1

Ha ha!!  My demeanor changed and instead of being frustrated for a long day– I was giddy happy with my new BFF, “Ray.”  I even snapped a picture.  If you are Ray or know him…  thanks for a super cool moment!