Faking Christmas
December 2020
December was full of Christmas shoots, some to promote shopping on Regents Street and St James for Crown Estates and some for the Government, to encourage people to follow the rules around Christmas mixing. But such is the ever changing pandemic that these ‘fake’ Christmas shoots were pretty much as christmassy as it got this year.
The first was with style journalist Alice Kemp Habib. We visited various Christmassy shops in the St James area of London’s West End around dusk and early evening, on the day that non essential shops (momentarily) reopened. We were trying to make the most of the lovely London lights, and project an optimistic and encouraging image of Christmas shopping. The new virus strain had other ideas and shortly after the piece ran, London went into tier 4 lockdown, but luckily the beautifully designed Ad, by Bridge studio, can still be seen here.
The next piece was a Government advertorial looking at various case studies of families that were going to celebrate Christmas at home in small, covid safe, ‘bubbles’. I visited the McCormacks Family and the Morton family and we all pretended that it was Christmas Day morning and they were about to celebrate, open present and chat (virtually) with their families. This was fun and really put me in the Christmas mood, but unfortunately a couple of days after the ad ran, the rules changes and the online version got pulled.
There was also an Ad for Suzuki with a Christmas theme. We made prop Christmas presents (perfectly wrapped) and purchased a tree for Sinead McIntyre and her family, who were trying out the car over the Christmas period.
I enjoyed my Fake Christmas while it lasted and it was fun to have a bit of a normal Christmas work run-up, even though it was somewhat futile.
Happy Christmas!