The weather was splendid – sunshine, light blue sky, it was warm but not too warm so that you start to sweat getting all icky and itchy, and there was not a single cloud in the sky. I was sitting in the open countryside eating a delicious ham and cheese sandwich and drinking a can of ice cold pink lemonade. It should have been a perfectly idyllic and relaxing Sunday but unfortunately it wasn’t.

Just a few meters away from me the sources of my annoyance were flirting heavily with each other.
The lovely Kevin, he is fulfilling every cliché about a model you can think of. An absolute hunk, handsome, some might even say beautiful. He knows that he is attractive but that’s the only thing he knows about. Unfortunately his intelligence does not equal his looks.
And then there is Dörte. I can easily imagine her mom being pregnant, reading an Ikea catalogue, seeing a mirror named Dörte and saying to her husband “What a wonderful mirror. Oh and see, what a wonderful name this mirror has. Dörte. Doesn’t it sound cute?”. For a fact, Dörte does not look like a Dörte nor does she look like a mirror. She looks like an Amanda or a Kelsey, an all American girl. Long brunette hair, blue eyes, delicate pale skin. And she had a body to kill with. But well, what do you expect of a model? I bet both Kevin’s and Dörte’s nutrition plan consists of cigarettes, coffee and purging.

What I was expecting of them was quite simple. All Kevin had to do was playing hero, showing his muscles and acting like he was shoving the little red convertible down the road. Dörte’s job was much easier than that. Basically all she had to do was to look good and to send a tentative smile from her seat at the convertible down to her supposed knight in shining amour. Since this was something a trained monkey could do I did not expected the photo shots for the Volkswagen commercial to be longer than three, maybe four hours. How could I’ve been so wrong? Its already lunchtime and I am sitting here since half past five in the morning.

After I finished my lunch I went back on the set, called all the participants to attention and announced that we were going to have another shot, hoping my two unprofessional turtledoves could restrain themselves this time.
The make up artist quickly put another layer of powder on the models faces, used some additional hairspray on Dörte. I grabbed my camera waiting for Kevin and Dörte to get into their positions. Damn it, why could the two of them do not a single thing right?
“Kevin, put your hand back on the car. You are supposed to push the car and not to push Dörtes skirt away,” I screamed. Slowly but surely I was losing my patience. While I was counting to ten in slow motion Kevin was giving me an apologetic look and did what he was told. I quickly took a few pictures because I did not now how long the acceptable behaviour of my models would last.

And I was right. It did not last very long. Instead of trying out some different poses as expected of them they seemed to have forgotten where they were. All my little monkeys were doing was looking hungrily into each others eyes; an inane smile was gracing their lips. I would not haven been very surprised if they started to drool or to have a go at each other right now, right here. But that was a thing I definitely did not want to see. All I really wanted to do was finishing the job and going home, having a nice evening with my spouse.
...so I decided to interrupt them again.
“If you continue acting like this, I am pretty sure Volkswagen want to redo their launching campaign for the new convertible with other models. But if you need the money we can ask if the penthouse magazine is interested in your pictures.” Well, that is not exactly what I said. All I got out was a very angrily sounding “If you”, before the funny events took place.

Upon hearing me scream Dörte got out of her trance and was terrified so much that she keeled over and fell right onto the parking brake, loosening it. I will never forget the moment when the cute little red convertible suddenly moved and rolled right over Kevin’s well formed and beautiful to look at foot. I confess, it is a little mean but this exact moment really made my day.

The photo shot ended in pure chaos. My little monkeys were crying. Kevin was crying over his foot and that we could not continue the shot and Dörte because Kevin took his cell phone to call his wife to tell her that he is not coming home tonight but going to the hospital to get a cast.
Then it started to rain cats and dogs and the technical crew were totally overstrained and did not know how to save their equipment the best way possibly.
And I was standing right in the middle of it, soaking wet with a self-sufficient and content smile on my lips, knowing next week I will try to take the same pictures again, but this time with different models. Perhaps I could talk my boss into some monkeys. Or a giraffe would be nice. I could put the animal into the car to stress the fact that the car is a convertible....