FROM CSPNet.com, a Website for the convenience store industry:
(the interest here, of course, is the VA Lottery starting a TPIR game)
The Station Is Right
Sep 10, 2003
Spot promotes new Virginia Lottery scratch game
PETERSBURG, Va. -- For 12 hours Thursday, a BP/Amoco station in Petersburg, Va., swarmed with film people rearranging soda stacks, setting up cameras and converting the convenience store into a replica of the set of the TV game show The Price is Right. The location was picked to host the filming of a Virginia Lottery commercial, said Ken Roy, executive director of the Central Virginia Film Office, said the Petersburg Progress Index.
Virginia Lottery contracted with Obsidian Productions LLC--the onsite production company of Petersburg-based New Millennium Studios--to film the commercial, in which several c-store customers find themselves whisked away to that game show, said the report. Actress Jama Williamson plays the part of the store clerk.
Owners Birju Bhagat and Shashi Patel said they were paid for the use of their facility, but that they also enjoyed supporting a little excitement in the area. “We wanted to have something happen in Petersburg, something exciting, something different,” Bhagat told the newspaper.
The filmmakers said the owners’ “cooperation has been absolutely outstanding. Not only were they willing to allow us to close the store for the filming, they also provided the production company a hair, make-up and wardrobe changing room in their adjacent Super 8 Motel.”
Said Roy, “This kind of support…represents the willingness of the local businesses to support the growing film and TV production industry.”
No date has been set for the release of the commercial, but it will be timed to coincide with the release of the Virginia Lottery’s “Price is Right” scratch game, Roy said.
