On our final day in Paris we headed to the metro station and passed a camera crew on our route. Kathryn made a joke saying that we should totally be filmed and that she wanted to be the star; we laughed and headed down the steps underground.
After our day of macaron filled fun, we were walking across République where we had seen the camera crew earlier, and a man comes up to us speaking in French. Realising we were from the UK, he switched to English and asked us to "come and we film you for an advert! It will take two minutes!". Having been approached and asked to buy things all day, I was all for saying no and moving on. But Kathryn (and then the others) decided it would be a fun thing to do! So we said okay and were briefed on what was wanted of us.
We were placed in front of a giant billboard with a flowing white skirt, resembling Marilyn Monroe's famous pose and told to look interested and when the wind machine blew we were to act surprised. I was so skeptical at this point and thought it was all going to turn out to be a massive practical joke or something! We did three takes of looking interested then acting surprised. Looking interested then acting surprised. Looking interested then acting surprised. Between takes we were all finding this hilarious and so surreal, like what are we doing right now, we don't even know what this is for and we have no idea what we're doing! After our success on the third take we asked what the advert was for and were told it was for a train company (upon researching after, I think it's one of those inter-railing train packages things). They had been filming members of the public all day, so we were pretty sure we probably would never make it into the ad.
As we were leaving, two of the crew members ran up to us and said we needed to sign a contract. Except this contract was in French so we had no idea what it said, but we signed it anyway! Probably not the best idea, but it seemed legit.
A month or two later, this advert pops up on youtube and we are actually in it!! Well, three and a half out of five of us are in it (the half being Ellie's mouth. Some of my friends are tall). The saddest thing is that Kathryn got cut out of the frame and never got to be in it, and she was the one who was pioneering our being-filmed-adventure!
So, that's going on my CV (for your viewing pleasure, click here). And the video has over 1 million views! 1 million people have seen my eyebrow raising acting skillz!
Bethan
a.k.a french advert star.
