Today we shot reenactments for the Smile project. The day started at The Hill restaurant in Grosse Pointe where we staged what will be the opening segment of the documentary.  Because we shot MOS (motion without sound), we have a stripped down technical crew. 

The day's first problem was that we couldn’t find the cards the camera records on. Everything is digital nowadays and instead of tape, we record on cards that we couldn't find. We looked and we called and we looked, but no cards. Now, you’re saying what does no recording cards have to do with a stripped down crew. Well, the person that would know where the cards are is not on the crew today, see. 

Finally, the DP finds one of the cards right where it should be, but it has video on it. So now what, do we erase the video or not, we don’t know. Finally, we decide that the video must have been backed up two days ago, so we erase it. If there’s any holes in the finished documentary you’ll know why.

Next we go to Jumps restaurant in Grosse Pointe to shoot a different segment. Our first challenge was, we not only went with a stripped down crew, we brought no lights and the restaurant needed lights. So the DP comes up with the idea of shooting the actors in silhouette, great. We get everything in place and I realize that one of the actresses had the wrong hair color and we couldn’t hide it. 

We decided to send a PA out to buy a wig. We google the nearest wig shop but they’re not open. So we wait, and wait and wait, when a mother and daughter walks into the restaurant, which is closed today, and the mother has the correct hair color. So, we quickly convince her to be our actress and I promised to get her out in one hour, she’s on her lunch break. The shot looked great, thanks to our mystery actress.  

Our last stops are a neighborhood in Grosse Pointe and a school in that same neighborhood. Here we’ll shoot our two actresses on super 8 film. 

Finally, we move to a school down the street.  Now I hadn’t done a site survey for this location, but I thought we could fly by the seat of our pants and get something with no problem, and we did.

Me and the DP are at the school thinking through the shot and agreeing how this will work just fine when someone from the school exits the building and says, “What are you doing?” Silly me, I thought school was out for the summer but there’s this little thing called summer school. I explained to the person what we want to do and he seemed fine until the school’s principal exits the building.  I’m thinking, this will be harder. So I launch into my explanation again and she buys it. In fact she says, “You should shoot the front of the school, it would look better.” Can you believe that!  Note to self, always shoot in Grosse Pointe.