How To Get Baby Actors TO Pee On Cue
(Another Kestum Bilt movie magic trick)
Who doesn’t love babies? But having them on your set can be challenging. (See staged picture above.) There are very specific working rules that have to be followed and then there is that moment when you need your young actor to deliver the goods. What if they’re teething? Crying? Pooping? Or just having a bad day.
But we digress. Let’s take a look at how to create intimacy, story and casting magic on any video set.
And…ACTION!
We just wrapped post-production on a wonderful spot for Jackson Memorial Hospital. We used a plethora of creative problem solving methods to make the movie magic happen. We’ve talked about story in past blogs so we’re not going to discuss that here.
At Kestum Bilt, we’re transparent internally and always with our clients. We believe in trust. So we let our clients know what production costs entail so that there are never any budget surprises.
Video Miracles Made Daily
For our Memorial Hospital shoot, we paid particular attention to our casting. We needed to ensure we had enough “backup” babies on shoot day.
Because of the necessary constraints of shooting in a hospital, we trimmed down the production crew to the absolute minimum needed for a shoot of this complexity:
1 Gaffer
1 Props person
1 Grip
1 Wardrobe/Make-up person
Director of Photography
Assistant Camera
Director
(Some BTS Pics and Stills)
By keeping the crew small and nimble, having lots of casting back-up babies and finding a way to get our babies to pee on cue (a little bit of art direction mixed with some VFX), we were able to focus on what was important: intimacy, story and emotion. Effectively telling the Jackson Memorial Hospital story.
We also shot in one location at the hospital. This allowed for fast set-up, shooting efficiency, bringing each set to us and moving from one shot to the next.
Oh yeah. Make sure you have plenty of baby "dolls" on hand. Babies have a very very limited time on set, so dolls help you light and block without disturbing your "precious baby stars."
The result is a fun, heart-warming spot for you to enjoy.