Over thirteen hours of setting up, moving jars, lights, cameras, filming and talking, all boils down to just a few minutes on a TV show. It seemed to take forever, but sure was fun. Why? Because like many of you out there, I am an Incurable Collector!
This was part of my debut on The Incurable Collector, a TV show designed for those of us that have a passion for our "stuff". It all started more than a year ago, when I was contacted by the show looking for cookie jar collectors. Although I was originally trying to find other collectors (rather than me) for them, they finally called one day and said, "Well, can we come out next week and film your collection?" Next week?? Yikes! Actually I turned that down and said I couldn't do it. Well two phone calls later, another date was negotiated. Unfortunately the fine patina of dust would have to stay on the majority of my jars as I was leaving town and didn't have time to clean them before the show.
Part of the traveling was to the International Collectibles Exposition in Anaheim, where the A & E producers met up with me to get some footage of new jars. It was there at Anaheim that I was excited to see the first jars by Dean Griff for Charming Tails and the new jars from Radko.
I got to play the diva as they filmed me, brought bottles of water, and generally was treated as a VIP, this of course had many of the ICE show participants wondering who the "important person" was! Hah, if only they knew -- I was a nobody that was having fun talking about my passion of collecting cookie jars.
A few days later a filming crew showed up at my home in Oklahoma to film the majority of the show segment. On the big day, at the early hour of 8 AM, the house started filling up with the camera crew, producer, and Nancy Allen, good friend/cookie jar expert. She was a great help and support when I would get a little carried away.
The crew immediately went to work checking out the parts of the house they would be filming, figuring out angles, lights, etc. and of course trying to decide just what jars they wanted to photograph.
Some of the dustiest and out of reach jars were picked to showcase, thankfully I had a chance to run a cloth over them before the cameras started rolling.
One scene even had me doing the actual dusting -- no faking it there, they needed cleaning!
Lights, Camera, Action were keywords of the day, as we moved from room to room doing bits and pieces of the show. They wanted to know how I started collecting, why and what started it all.
One of the biggest parts of the show were the values of the different jars shown, it's sometimes hard to put a value on jars, so between books, price paid and expert Nancy's backup, we were able to come up with reasonable price guesstimates. The show also does outside research to make sure prices are in the ballpark and, in this case, were in contact with Mike Schneider, author of my favorite cookie jar book as a backup.
The filming crew did a great job and it was really fun showing off my collection of jars. As we all know, it's always fun to talk about your stuff and they made it easy to do. I thought I would be camera shy and I was at the beginning for about ten minutes, but then the hesitation went away as they made me feel very comfortable.
It really does take a long time to get it all down and we worked straight through -- with only a very short lunch break -- until 7 P.M. It was eleven hours one day and over two hours in California at the show, all for just a few minutes of show time. I had a great time and I've been asked if I would do it again -- you bet!
More:
Behind the Cameras, A Tour of the Filming
