More Wine?

Yesterday I had my first shoot where I played the role of producer dealing with the restaurant owners, asking the interview questions, etc. I was pretty excited until we got to the restaurant at the scheduled time only to find out that the owners thought we were a day early!

We were able to organize a later shoot and decided to return at 5:30. Language barriers are such a fun challenge. It's amazing how a simple comment or question can be completely misunderstood.

We had one of the waiters, for example, holding a large plate of appetizer - a plate that the owner was VERY excited about featuring. Then we decided that we would have the waitress being interviewed comment about the plate we just shot.

"We'll show you talking," I explained, "and then we'll cut to a shot of that."

"What???" the owner questioned

"You going to cut that?" he asked, "You no like? We make somsing else - no? Yes. Something else!"

Before we knew what was happening, we had two tables filled with food, drinks and wine.

By the end of the shoot we were spending a few hours drinking complimentary wine and finishing up all the food that was prepared. Ahhh the perks of the industry.