Part 5
The next several days were full of frenzied activity. The next morning Tim and his employees worked on the script and details for the first two ads. After lunch, Shawna showed up with three women.
"I want you to meet the boss of this office, Tim Johnson," Shawna said, introducing him. She pointed out and named Julie, Mia, Kaitlyn and Anna, then turned to the newcomers. "This is Joy, she's going to be our camera operator." Joy was another pretty Asian girl, not much taller than Mia; she stepped forward and shook Tim's hand, and then did the same with the females in the office.
"This is Becky," Shawna said, and a busty, dirty blonde with sparkling blue eyes stepped forward. "She'll be handling lighting and set design." Becky smiled at Tim and shook his hand.
"And this is Pam." Shawna indicated a waifish, petite brunette with an easy smile that revealed very cute dimples. "She does makeup and wardrobe."
When the newcomers had finished shaking hands with everybody, Shawna addressed the group.
These ladies," - she indicated Joy, Becky and Pam - "have a lot of experience, so you'll be in good hands. I handpicked them to work on this campaign because I thought it would be good to have an all-female team, given the nature of these ads."
Pam was nodding and looking at Tim's attractive employees. "We want you to feel comfortable, and know that you'll be treated well."
Joy said, "This should be a fun campaign. We'll keep things lighthearted, and respect everyone's boundaries. Ms. Green told us that the theme is sexy, but that doesn't mean exploitative."
The women responded with smiles, but Tim felt a little insulted. Did they think his employees would have been treated badly if Shawna hadn't picked an all-female team? "I appreciate that," Tim said, "even though I'm not sure it's necessary that the team has to be only women for my employees to feel respected."
"Really?" Shawna said, crossing her arms and giving Tim a hint of a crooked grin. "What if the shoe were on the other foot, and this campaign was for a hot new perfume, and you were going to be prancing around and losing YOUR clothes? Would you feel more comfortable doing that in front of a male crew, or a female one?"
Tim saw that all eight of the attractive women around him were smiling at that thought. He didn't want to get off on the wrong foot with the newcomers, so he made an unconvincing attempt to laugh it off. "Okay, I guess I see your point. I didn't mean any offense."
Becky smiled at him. "None taken. And don't let our appearance fool you. We've been doing this a while, and we can get what we need from any actors, male or female."
"Okay," Shawna said. "Show us what you've got, Tim, and these ladies will get a good idea of what they need to do to put you where they want you."
Over the next hour, Tim and his employees walked the new team through the latest iteration of the ad. As he described each female's revealing scene, Becky stepped around the room, figuring out how to position everything and light everyone. The four women seemed to vacillate between embarrassment and excitement as they contemplated the action.
Pam talked with each of the women about what they'd be wearing, and Joy and Shawna talked camera angles and shots.
After a couple of dry runs and tweaking, they went to lunch, and in the afternoon they shot the ad.
It opened with Tim doing a voice-over that introduced his agency, and their contract to find a way to market Naked Attraction. After he got his team to work, he went into his office and sat down, turning the bottle in his hands so that the camera got it from several angles.
Pam had told Shawna to ask Tim and the women to bring in a variety of their own clothes, and she also brought in some wardrobe possibilities for each of them. Tim had brought in a business-casual outfit of dress shoes, dark slacks and a white shirt that he wore open at the neck. During a quick make-up session with him, Pam had complimented him on his tan, and applied only enough makeup to be sure that his skin was uniformly brown.
Tim gave a shot of the body spray to the top of his chest, just beneath the open collar of his shirt, and then a quick one to the underside of one wrist. Just then Mia came in, but she stopped just as she crossed the threshold of his office.
Joy came up with a visual cue to use repeatedly in the ad series: when Mia first got a whiff of the Naked Attraction, Joy used a close up shot of her face. Mia's delicate nostrils flared just a bit, and the beginnings of a naughty smile appeared at the corners of her mouth.
She dropped her papers on Tim's desk and hurried back out to the office, looking both ways and then walking quickly toward the short hallway that led into the small kitchen. She returned in a moment with a ladder, and quickly set it up beneath a light fixture. She took a quick, furtive glance at Tim's office, saw that he was looking at his computer, and reached down and rolled up the bottom of her already fairly short skirt until it was shorter than appropriate for office wear.
She climbed up the ladder, then reached up and unscrewed the working bulb. Then she called her boss in a sing-song voice. "Mr. Johnson?"
Tim came out of his office, and Mia said, "Could you get me a light bulb, and then hold the ladder for me while I change it? I'm not sure how steady it is."
Tim looked at the amount of upper thigh that Mia was showing, and then gave the camera a comically raised eyebrow. Joy had the idea to speed up the film of him leaving and returning with the bulb in editing, so it would appear that he zipped out and back at superhuman speed.
Tim held the bulb out for her, and Mia took it. She made sure that he stepped close and put two hands on the ladder, and then she grinned to herself and turned, stepping up one, two and then three rungs. The camera was on Tim's face as Mia ascended, her skirt, then thighs, then calves drawing even with his eyes.
He stepped slightly forward and craned his neck upward. Joy's camera shot caught just the bottom hem of Mia's skirt, but it was clear that he was looking up under it. His eyes widened, and his smile grew.
"Okay, we've got that," Joy said. Mia stepped back down off the ladder. "How was that?"
"Good," Shawna said. "Tim has a little comic charm in him. He obviously enjoyed the view, but not in a pervy way."
"Well, maybe with just a hint of pervy-ness," Pam said, and Mia blushed, but giggled.
"I resent that," Tim said, smiling. "Mia's a valued employee, and I just wanted to be sure that she didn't fall and hurt herself."
"Keep telling yourself that," Anna said.
