Jamaica, my second home...

I sometimes go a year or two without going to Jamaica.  I sometimes go there ten times per year.  This looks like it's going to be a ten times per year kind of year.

I went down to shoot a commercial for Lime (Jamaica's version of At&T).  It was a 4 day shoot crammed into 2 days.  I used 100% local Jamaican crew and they did a fantastic job. 

There is a new rule (new to me at least).  About twice per year (usually Christmas and Summer) certain cities have embargo's where they prevent people from taking a lot of excess baggage and or any large or heavy baggage.  My experience up until this year was that did not include media (camera) equipment.  When I went to check in for my flight to Kingston (about 3 and a half hours early) I was informed that I could not fly my steadicam into Kingston.  My only option was to fly to Montego Bay (3 hours from Kingston with good traffic).  That added 3 hours to my trip down and 3 hours to my trip home making the whole job feel pretty long with a lot of driving. 

Part of what we get paid to do in the movie business is to improvise, think on our feet and basically get the job done.  This was a good example of why it's important to get to the airport early when you are traveling, particularly when you are traveling internationally.

Here is a rough cut of the spot, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, especially considering I had no prep, no knowledge of the equipment or locations or crew and we shot 9 locations in 2 days.