"Never work with kids or animals." So says the Biz adage.

I'm of the mindset of Danny Boyle, who said the adage simply isn't true.

Yesterday was BigHugeCorp's "Bring Your Child to Work Day" (which, in true big business fashion, was summarily reduced to the unpronounceable acronym "BYCTWD").

Part of the festivities included filming a commercial -- really a PR piece, "focusing on the Company's most valuable assets: Its people!"

Once again, as they were looking around for someone to pull this off, they again went down the rabbit hole of, "Who do we know that does films and commercials? Adam!"

So we wrangled together two groups of 24 kids, shot two commercials in an hour a piece, edited each for a rough-cut (an hour and 35 minutes, respectively, for editing commercials #1 and #2), and we were able to show the kids a semblence of a finished commercial on the day of the shoot. Very cool.

This was by no means a solo act. I had some talented people working with me the couple of weeks leading up to yesterday. One is a theater actress. Another has theater, modeling, and (a ha!) kids' theater camp experience (why wasn't he on the hook for this thing?). An editor-want-to-be who knew the tools and could grasp the creative direction. Our DP is an accomplished film maker in his own right. An adept photographer who made a good grip/gaffer. An intern we could tell to shut up and do whatever we asked (never understimate the value of that). And other folks who gave their time and energy to make cue cards and help out in other ways.

So it turned out well. It's footage of kids being authentic, talking about what their parents do to make BigHugeCorp successful, and it turned out well. Because they're minors and the thing isn't intended for broadcast, I won't post any clips here, so you'll have to take my word for it.

Now, to spend the weekend cranking the final cut for OneWhoHasPower in BigHugeCorp to approve.

At least the kids were fun ...