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The story so far: After producing team -- Mark Wallenwine and Brian Hosan -- came up with an idea and concept: they needed a location to shoot the ad – one attempt to shoot in a make shift set failed miserably. So for inspiration they turned to a higher power.

By Mark Wallenwine

I went home that night and before going to bed I decided to pray. In my prayer I said "God if you want this to happen you are going to have to make it happen and may you have all the glory in the process."

The next day Kay Gross, wife of David Gross who played the security guard strolled into our office (Brian, Ethan, Joey and I all work together) and said that we had permission to film at the Nice N Easy in Pottersville if we wanted to. Shocked we asked how she got permission for us? She had talked to Marie Haffer who is good friends with the manager of the store. We followed up with the manager and got the official ok to film starting at 2:00am the Tuesday before the contest was to close. We then called Matthew Peterson, the only actor who didn't work in the same building as us, and asked him if he would still be willing to shoot at that hour.

Despite having to be to school the next day at 7:00am he graciously agreed and we were back in business. On the set Joey Esguerra stole the show making the crew laugh out loud at his victory dance for winning the face off. His victory dance, which wasn't originally planned to be in the final cut of the commercial, made it in due to the fact that it made us all laugh time after time. The security guard set was filmed over the course of the next two nights at a video studio located in Word of Life Headquarters. The reason it took two nights is the primary shot of the store worker and security guard didn't carry the right emotion from the initial shoot.

We first had the characters cheer like it was a touchdown and then cringe like they saw a low blow. All of which wasn't right for the pace of the commercial. We decided to re-shoot, but instead this time we had the two characters laughing. In Post-Production every single sound effect, with the exception of the security guard and the store worker laughing, were recorded later and added in editing. It has been a really fun project and great learning experience, but one thing that has surprised me and been a huge encouragement is the support of our friends and community as we have gone through this process.

Who’s Who in the Production

Most of us work together at Word of Life in the Marketing Department but ironically none of us do video full time. Brian and I both have a background in video production. I went to a two-year technical school for video production and Brian was the head video technician at Word of Life before taking on his current role of Creative Projects Coordinator for the Marketing Department. Myself, Ethan and Joey also work for Word of Life in the Marketing Department.

I am the Lead Graphic Designer, Ethan is the Social Media Manager and Joey is our staff photographer. David Gross who played the part of the security guard also works for Word of Life in a different department. I do not know his official job title. All I know that he is responsible for mailroom operations at Word of Life.

And from David Peterson, proud father of Matt Peterson, one of the stars of the commercial: “Matthew is a full time students at Adirondack Community College and plans to become a Radiology Technician. His hobby is baking and pizza making. Some know him as the Bearded Baker. Just for a point of interest, Mark, David, Brian, Matt, Ethan and Joey recently started attending Mountainside as well.         