GetYourGuide x Food & Wine — Commercial

Filming and travel are my two favorite activities in life and so when the opportunity came up to produce a collaboration project between GetYourGuide and Food & Wine Magazine in Tokyo, Japan, I was giddy! The piece was meant to showcase the ease of booking curated activities as a solo traveler in a new city. 

This commercial needed authenticity to be convincing, so we adopted a docu-quality as we followed F&W Senior Editor Karla Alindahao on her Tokyo adventure. My producing partner Annie and I knew that the perfect Director who could ride the docu-commercial line was key to the success of this project. Cue the fabulous Jess Berry. A true multi-hyphenite, Jess is an incredible Director, Actor, and an expert at karaoke! As she started working hard on the creative, we also began to work closely with our Japanese Fixer Brian Kobo from Tokyo Colours who was instrumental in the logistics of the production. 

Our time on the ground was short, but after a day of scouting with our local DP Nobu Arakawa and key crew, we had a plan mapped out for filming the next day. Filming took place at cultural sites with incredible local architecture, a beautiful garden with cherry blossoms still in bloom, and two GetYourGuide experiences: tea and sushi making classes respectively. 

The local crew was incredible and though we had only spent a couple days together, by the end, a bond had truly been made between us. When I'm deep in the weeds of production logistics, budgets and client calls, sometimes I forget the incredible privilege it is to have opportunities like this. As I sat in Tokyo eating some of the most delicious ramen I've ever tasted, I was reminded yet again to not take opportunities like this for granted, and to savor every last moment…..pun intended.