Shooting a Commercial in Rome

Thursday, 23 April 2009

Spent a weekend in Rome shooting two commercials for the One World airline alliance – LP travel writers and TV presenters giving their suggestions for business travellers. In 48 hectic hours we seemed to find ourselves in all sorts of corners of Rome, but for me the highlight was the morning we spent at the Bar della Pace in, funnily enough, the Piazza della Pace.

Quite apart from the very authentic café it was the perfect looking Roman square complete with the Santa Maria della Pace church to make it look even more picturesque. We added to the flavour by parking a very nice old Fiat 500 in shot – an original one, not the brand new version. And then, totally unrequested, a second Fiat 500 turned up, just to double the authenticity quotient.

As the morning wore on – and I got my lines wrong and assorted other events intruded – the square began to look more and more like a Fellini movie. I’m sure I saw chain smoking nuns march past, the Dolce Vita stars must have been there and I could have sworn the two guys at one of the tables were mafia guys having macchiatos. Except that one of them was our driver and we’d placed him there ourselves.