G-Shock X Highsnobiety Campaign

Welcome to a day in the life of a model—campaign edition.

In this blog, I’ll be taking you along with me on a day in my life. Campaign edition for all the curious people who want to know what happens behind the scenes and on set.

I did this campaign for G-Shock and Highsnobiety a couple of years ago. One of the funniest, coldest, and coolest campaigns I’ve done.

Day 1: Travel and Prep Day

This is a perfect example of the early starts I mentioned in my previous blog (https://asharakha.com/my-model-journey/). I was up at 4 a.m. to catch a train from Leicester to London, and then I had the production van pick me up from the station. We then went on a little ride to pick up the rest of the crew. The shoot was in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, so we had a very long drive down. I think all together, the drive down was around 4 hours. There was not a more perfect time to bond, though! Jokes, everyone was asleep, and I was wide awake trying to entertain myself without talking to anyone. (Donkey behaviour from Shrek)

I mean, my entertainment was yamming all of the unlimited snacks on the table. Eventually, when everyone woke up, we got to know each other. The team was huge, and there were two vans carrying around eight passengers each.

We arrived at the hotel at around 2:30 p.m., checked in, and went straight into styling and wardrobe. After the stylist and team had decided on three outfits each, we jumped back into the production vans and went to scout the locations we were going to shoot at for the campaign tomorrow. The idea of this shoot was supposed to be nature-filled, and we had three G-Shock watches to shoot that symbolised fire, water, and earth.

Location 1:

It was a breathtaking black slate mine location, surrounded by farmland and nature. The slate was completely black, and it was also the beginning of February, winter in the UK, so everything was dark and gloomy.

Location 2:

This was a waterfall and lake, which were also very beautiful. This was for the water scene.

Location 3 ,

Location 3 was supposed to be the famous pink road in Wales. It wasn’t really, so we couldn’t go ahead with the shot there. But there was a green forest, which was stunning. It had been raining, so everything around was super damp and eerie, but awesome.

Location 4

This was, by far, my favourite. This was a field that we had to walk quite far to get to. It was raining, so it was super cold and wet everywhere. This location felt magical. Coincidentally, there were two beautiful wild horses that had come into the field and walked past us. Funnily enough, we got some test shots of us walking by the horses, and this ended up making the final cut.

After we had scouted for some locations for a few hours, we went back to the hotel, all freshened up, and met at Nando’s for a team dinner. An early night was needed as our call time the next morning was at 7 a.m. Usually, campaign days are early starts and late finishes.

Day 2: Shoot day

I woke up around 6 a.m. so I could do my morning rituals and prepare my mindset for a busy and exciting day. Here’s a link to my morning rituals blog: https://asharakha.com/morning-ritual-that-will-change-your-life/. The team met downstairs, and we all headed to the hair and makeup van that had arrived. It was huge! Really cool, actually. We went to the back room, where we met the hair and makeup artist. The look was natural and glowy with a wet hair look. We got changed into our first outfits, had breakfast, and made our way to location 1.

Scene 1:

It was absolutely freeeezing! Tani and I had the biggest shock coming out of that trailer van, especially as my outfits were thin. The driver had parked quite far for scene 1, so we had to walk for a while. Anyway, then it was go time. We took singular shots and double shots together, wearing the watch that corresponded with the scene. The vibe was fire, earth, and water. So each watch had its own location that matched it. This was an earth scene, and we had to climb up the black slates. It was a lot of motion shots, which was fun, and a combination of video and stills. Kept me and Tani entertained.

Scene 2:

Next up was the water scene. We changed and went down to the second location. Both Tani and I had to actually get in the water, but thankfully only up to the wellie boot height. You could feel how cold the water was even with foot warmers, extra socks, and thick wellies. This was a really cool scene where we had to put our hands in the water, holding and throwing rocks to show off the watches.

Scene 3: 

After the water scene, we broke for lunch. As we were on location, we had to eat in the makeup and styling van, and then we went straight back into hair and makeup touch-ups. This next scene was so cool; this was the red road. However, due to the rain, it was washed away, so it didn’t look like a red road at all. We were in the forest for this one, though, and you could really feel the vibe of nature in it. It was very earthy, and the air smelled damp and moss-like. I loved it! So in these shots, we had to walk through the forest and even run. It was wet and slippery, and it just dipped downhill. That made it funny, though.

Scene 4: 

This is where it started getting tough. We had been up since 7 a.m. (6 a.m. for me), and it was getting to around 4 p.m., so we were tired and so cold. We did the pony scene without the ponies, as mentioned before, just so the client would have a few options. At this point, the temperature had dropped to something silly and it was raining. This outfit was quite a sheer top with a bra underneath, so I wasn’t covered up. The team was amazing and gave all of their coats and layers to us to wear in between shots, but gosh, it was cold.

Scene 5: 

This was the last scene of the day. We were racing against the light but managed to make it. My favourite scene was when the drivers drove us on top of a massive hill overlooking mountains and the sunset. We were in an open field and had to walk through and get some incredible pictures. This was the fire scene, so they had lit a torch, and I had to hold it up in the air and walk. We then did some close-up shots of the watches near the fire, and the final edit looks so cool.

Travel back: 

We wrapped around 7 p.m. and then had a 5-hour drive back to London. As the shoot overran, I couldn’t get a train back to Leicester as they had booked me a hotel at the last minute in London. We got back to London around 12 a.m., and I was exhausted!

Overall, this job has been one of my favourites. The final campaign that came out turned out so well, and I was so honoured to have booked such a good job with an incredible team. It has definitely been one of the highlights of my career so far. It showed me that modelling isn’t all glam, for sure!

Plus, this campaign ended up in store windows and hit global territory!

You can watch the vlog over on my Tiktok page (https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGeL5Pr3y/)

Let me know what you think of this blog in the comments below.

Love,