I should have known better...

After spending years producing Canadian television I knew full well what could happen on a location shoot. (Like the time one of our crews used a farmer’s field for a battle scene and forgot to inform the neighbours and the local police and fire departments that they’d be blowing stuff up in the middle of the night. Oops.) But when a production company contacted me earlier this year about shooting a commercial in my house the amount of money they offered made me forget all the boo-boos and only remember the shoots that had gone right.

A commercial would only inconvenience me for four or five days and I’d get handsomely compensated for that inconvenience. I knew there’d be some dings and pings on my walls (that would be quickly repaired after the production), one day for a tech survey (a small group of people traipsing all over the house, measuring things, planning shots, etc.), one prep/set-up day, one very long shoot day (14 hours or more) of having my house invaded by 60+ people, one day after the shoot for the production’s cleaning crew to come in and make everything look shiny new. And after that? I’d go to the bank and deposit the cheque.

The location manager for the commercial explained the COVID protocols that the cast and crew would be required to follow. The number of people allowed into the house at any one time would be severely limited. No one would be allowed to use any bathroom. No one would be allowed to rifle through my cupboards looking for props to replace any items they’d forgotten to bring (something the art department is prone to do). No one would be allowed to eat in the house. It sounded like the perfect shoot to me.

Then he told me I couldn’t be in the house because of COVID protocols. I balked at the idea of letting a crew run rampant in my home unsupervised, but he promised that he’d be here; he’d take care of my home as if it were his own. I begrudgingly agreed to let the production put me up in a hotel for two nights.

Before the set-up day I cleared every movable object out of the rooms they planned to shoot in or store their props in. I knew they’d be shooting in my bedroom and I made it very clear that both my bedroom closet and office were no-go zones. I stored my duvet and bedroom curtains in my closet and some breakables in my office.

On the set-up day the crew moved my bed into the dining room and carefully stored it behind cardboard at the farthest end of the room – away from where the props would be stored. They also put my antique dining room chairs and table behind cardboard.

There was one antique cabinet that we all agreed shouldn’t and wouldn’t be moved because it was full of all the old family crystal.

It was carefully wrapped in moving blankets and then blocked off with cardboard.

I hid all the toilet paper (because I know what crews are like when there’s a bathroom right there versus one in a truck down the street) and was about to head to the hotel when the location manager said “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, I won’t be here on the shoot day, I have to be on another set, but my assistant will be here”. So much for promising he’d be here to take care of my home as if it were his own. But I reassured myself that things would be okay. This crew had done the best wrap-up job I’d ever seen.

During the shoot day I worried. Worried so much that I decided to drive down my street to see how big the production really was. The street was jammed with trucks…but one truck was noticeably absent – the honeywagon (portable bathroom facilities). I called the location manager’s assistant to ask why. “It was needed on another set, so we’ve been using your powder room until it gets here.” Uh-huh. That would be the locked powder room – the one that I had been assured wouldn’t be used due to COVID regulations – the one that didn’t have any toilet paper, soap or hand towels in it. I started to dread what I was going to find when I got home.

I got the call telling me that the shoot had wrapped just before 11:00pm and that’s when I heard the words “There was a slight incident…” Someone had “bumped” into the cabinet with the crystal and “a few things” had been broken. I ran to the hotel’s parking garage and headed home.

A herd of angry elephants with serious digestive and coordination issues going on a slight rampage would have done less damage to my home. Here are just a few of the highlights…

The cabinet with the crystal was damaged on the top, sides and front. Both of its brass door handles were bent. A significant portion of the crystal had been smashed. It had survived, intact, through five generations of my family; it took less than one day for a production to destroy it. I asked the location manager’s assistant what happened. He didn’t know. He hadn’t been inside the house because of COVID protocols. Which meant that the kids really had been let out for recess without any adult supervision.

There were several chunks and shards of broken crystal on the garage floor. No one would admit to knowing how they got there. Nor could anyone ‘remember’ what happened to the cabinet. Sure. Because when 19 pieces of antique crystal smash they make very little sound and it’s easily forgettable.

My bedroom curtains weren’t in my closet anymore – they’d been dumped into a pile on the dining room floor and there was a garbage can sitting on top of them. I didn’t see the dried blood on one of the curtains until I took them to the dry cleaner. My duvet had been dumped in a second pile.

The top of the wooden table in the kitchen looked as if a clowder of sharp-clawed cats on crack had held a salsa party on it. One of the knives from my cutlery set was lying on the dining room floor underneath the bookcase from my bedroom and there was dried paint on it. Several of my mugs, measuring cups and spoons were lying on a production table in the garage – all of them filthy with substances that no one could or would identify. The dining room table no longer had a moving blanket protecting it and the dining room chairs and a truckload of props had been stacked up on it.

Most of the things I’d stored in my no-go zone office were damaged to some extent. The screen from my office window was lying against the paintings I’d put in the office to keep safe. That one was explained to me – “The guys needed to run a cable out the window.” The window in the room that they weren’t supposed to go in.

Two half-eaten sandwiches were lying on the counter in my bathroom. So much for the COVID rule about not being allowed to eat in the house or use the house bathrooms. The powder room was in even worse shape than a portable toilet after 3 days at Woodstock and the state of the toilet in my bathroom was beyond polite description.

My mattress and box spring had been moved to the main traffic area in the kitchen and the mattress was dirty and torn. To add insult to the many injuries, while the cleaning crew was doing their thing the next day I heard one of the dining room chairs fall off the table and crash onto the hardwood floor in the dining room.

I spent the next two weeks arguing with the production company to get reimbursed for my meals and parking at the hotel, in-between running loads through the dishwasher of everything that was in the kitchen cupboards and drawers. (Who knows how many people’s hands were rummaging around in there?) The producer started to push back on whether or not I really needed a new mattress so I had to go out and buy one myself. Deliveries were delayed due to COVID and I had to sleep on a couch for 9 nights. I had to pay to get appraisals done of the damages to the crystal and furniture. I asked the production company when painters would be coming to fix the dings and pings on just about every wall in the house and was told that everything had been handed over to their insurance company and I’d have to wait a month or more until that was settled. Just like I’d have to wait to be reimbursed for my new bed, the dry cleaning of the curtains and duvet, and the appraisals.

My mattress was finally delivered and I was able to sleep in my bedroom again, but my curtains didn’t get back from the dry cleaner for another two weeks – two weeks that I had to sleep on full display for everyone and anyone using the walking trail behind my house. When I was hanging up the curtains (that the dry cleaner hadn’t been able to get all the blood out of) I discovered that the curtain rod in my bedroom hadn’t been rehung properly. I asked the production company to send someone over to fix it and was told that I should just do it myself.

That’s when I reached the end of my patience rope and grabbed my favourite power tool – my keyboard.

I wrote to the CEO of the company whose commercial it was and asked him to please pass my letter on to someone who would actually do something about it. That’s when things finally started to go right.

The damages totalled just under $10,000. I’ll probably never be able to replace the crystal because it was so old. I was reimbursed for my expenses and given the money to cover the repairs 7 weeks after the production.

It took 4 months to get my house back to the way it was before the commercial shoot.

And the commercial? It started airing long before the repairs were done. My house is in it for about 5 seconds.

The crew taped a message to themselves on the door into the house from the garage and this is how I found the door when I came home. The photo says it all.

While writing this I got a phone call from a location manager. He wanted to shoot a commercial in my house and assured me that his crew would be careful. I offered to give him a good deal on some oceanfront property in Saskatchewan.