This is part two of a series of behind the scenes blog posts about the making of the latest QUT television commercials.
Shooting begins in earnest.
First stop, the Dubai HQ of the engineering firm our young QUT student already works for. They’re using a brand new and highly secret welding method to build secret components for a top secret engineering project I’m not at liberty to discuss here.
We continue on to various Dubai engineering landmarks. Our young star (a real student; no prior television experience) makes a good fist of repeating his lines to camera half a dozen times in eight different locations, in conditions that’d have an Aussie actor calling for his union rep.
Arvo of Day 2
Aston Martin DB9. Bentley Continental GT. Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera. Of the many exciting ways to die in Dubai, being mown down by a half million dollar supercar is just one.
Look left as you would in Brizzy and you risk becoming a new hood ornament for one of the countless exotic vehicles oil money has bought for the lucky Emiratis. For such a highly regulated and dare I say, punitive society, the average driver’s behaviour on the road is nothing short of jaw-dropping. Everywhere you look, Pirellis are being shredded and redlines are being ignored.
As for the Dubai cabbies… even though they drive Toyotas, not Lamborghinis, they still make like Dick Johnson at Mt Panorama. To a Dubai cabbie, speed signs are invisible, indicating to change lanes is for wimps, and if you can see bitumen between your cab and the car in front, it’s just not tailgating. I was sure our driver had a dicky throttle, such was the randomness of acceleration/deceleration on our drive from the airport. At least the violent motion helped loosen up my fused vertebrae from the plane flight.
