The Matter of Life — Docu-Reenactment

Director Tracy Robinson asked me to produce narrative reenactment scenes for a documentary she was filming on an open adoption. We spent weeks thoughtfully collaborating on which parts of the story best translated to film, as well as how to capture them effectively and within our budget constraints. We worked through scenes like home and local town life, cross-country flights, and of course, the biggest scene of them all: the delivery. Even though part of the story took place on the East Coast, we chose to shoot everything in and around Los Angeles as the majority of the story had taken place there. 

I flew out to L.A. for a week to meet up with Tracy and scout the best locations for our selected scenes. We decided on a studio with a backlot and standing sets for some of the interior scene, two real homes, and a few streets that would need to temporarily close down for filming. I ended my trip with two days in Hollywood for casting sessions, and in the weeks that followed, spent countless hours on permit paperwork, storyboarding, budgeting, finalizing our cast, hiring crew, and funneling all of the pertinent information to the department heads. A month later, I headed back to L.A. for the five-day shoot. 

This project provided a lot of great memories: from our DP operating a Movi while skateboarding down the center of a closed road, to the adventures of working with child and teen actors, to filming on an airplane set and using lighting gags to imitate the visual nuances of a banked turn. But the delivery scene stands out the most in my mind. We casted newborn twins to accommodate the restrictions that come along with hiring babies, and our studio nurse and studio teacher helped us stay within the guidelines. We filmed on a soundstage hospital set and decided to run the delivery scene in its entirety without a cut. This kept us from having to film each shot separately, and allowed the actors to deliver a more organic performance. To ensure accuracy, our on-set Medical Consultant skillfully walked us through the delivery process and guided the actors through their individual roles. Even though our delivery scene inevitably depicted a Hollywood version, there were real tears in the eyes of our cast and crew as we witnessed the magic of this staged birth. Shout out to our 1st AC, Ernesto Prieto, for following the action on camera—without marks—as we let the entire scene play out in full. 

This was a fantastic shoot from beginning to end. And as always, my awesome LA crew knocked it out of the park.