*Note: I've had these "filming day _ " posts in my draft box for quite sometime hoping I'd have time to work and elaborate on them. But here we are in April and they still aren't posted so they're going up today, complete or incomplete, so I can move on and start posting about the right now.
Let's go back to November 11, 2011. This is the day we started filming for House Hunters.
I don't want to forget our experience (because it's different than what was on the show) so here it is...
The film crew was supposed to arrive between 8:45-9 on Thursday morning. The house was clean, toys put away, hair curled, and my outfit picked out for the day. We prepared the best we could but really had no idea what to expect. Donna, the segment producer, had sent us an itinerary so we knew the agenda for each day - it helped but looking at it made us more nervous. We had no idea how we’d cram all the activities in 5 days.
Iitinerary for day one:
Let's go back to November 11, 2011. This is the day we started filming for House Hunters.
I don't want to forget our experience (because it's different than what was on the show) so here it is...
The film crew was supposed to arrive between 8:45-9 on Thursday morning. The house was clean, toys put away, hair curled, and my outfit picked out for the day. We prepared the best we could but really had no idea what to expect. Donna, the segment producer, had sent us an itinerary so we knew the agenda for each day - it helped but looking at it made us more nervous. We had no idea how we’d cram all the activities in 5 days.
Iitinerary for day one:
When the film crew showed up they arrived right on time, came in and introduced themselves. They were friendly but it was business. They looked at our house for a second then went outside and unloaded all their gear: lights, camera, bags of stuff, etc. They asked us to wait inside while they filmed the outside of our house. It was all so weird and I didn’t know what to do or how to react, do we peek out the window, do we tidy up the house more, fix ourselves up, offer then water, say "make yourselves at home"? They seemed to be out there for a while. I just told them to help themselves to whatever they needed (and I made sure I had a fridge stocked full of goodies...that sadly no one ate).
Shasta arrived shortly after the crew to help with Leila when Leila wasn't on camera. All I'm gonna say is thank goodness Shasta was there to entertain her. They said we didn't need anyone to come help, but we know our daughter and there was no way she was going to stay quiet while they interviewed just the two of us. Thank you Shasta!
Susan: the director (below with Leila). She's worked for HGTV for many years. There are 7 directors that film for House Hunters alone and I like her style. She likes people to get to know us, so she likes to film us doing what we like to do together (in our case it was riding bikes down the canyon, thrift shopping - which they didn't show on film, walking downtown Sugarhouse. Watching other episodes, sometimes they don't show the couples interests, so we're really happy with the producer we got! She's also filmed House Hunters International and that's where she met her husband. Talk about a dream job. Except for the fact that you're away from your family for weeks at a time - she said she loved traveling but didn't love being away almost 24/7.
Bruce: the camera guy (above). He's got tons of experience filming shows. He currently works for other shows on HGTV, not strictly House Hunters. He's alos worked on many other shows, like Elimidate which is funny because in our interview (in the living room) they asked us how we met, we told them on elimidate but not the show, he was like, "hmm, I was gonna say I don't recognize you". He's hilarious and got along with him super well...we've kept in touch with him after the show and he's given us advice about our kitchen along the way. We just texted him last week and showed him after pictures. We haven't decided on a back splash so he's giving us ideas. He's an architect on the side, I think, so he's way into this kinda stuff.
Chuck: the sound guy. Probably has the sweetest job because he gets to fondle women everyday...putting on our mic's I mean. He had to go down my shirt at least 2-3 times a day while filming. In the morning, after lunch, and anytime my mic sounded funny. It was awkward at first but he's super respectful and announced every time he needed to touch you and where. Since he was the sound guy he was ALWAYS able to hear what we were saying. Even when we weren't rolling sometimes he'd forget to take his headphones off and could hear us a mile away. On day one after they filmed us in the storage facility, I was still inside the facility when the rest of the crew, including Eric, was outside the facility. He heard my phone conversation with my sister when she told me my Papa passed away. It was hard to hear, especially since we weren't done filming day 1 so I had to deal with it later that day. He knew what had happened before I walked up to even tell Eric. Later that night is when Eric told me he heard my conversation because Chuck looked at Eric and said, "Uh oh, this isn't good. Who is Cynthia talking to?". After day 1 I tried to be careful about what I said while miked up. After 5 long days of filming it was nice to have our privacy back!
Shasta arrived shortly after the crew to help with Leila when Leila wasn't on camera. All I'm gonna say is thank goodness Shasta was there to entertain her. They said we didn't need anyone to come help, but we know our daughter and there was no way she was going to stay quiet while they interviewed just the two of us. Thank you Shasta!
Susan: the director (below with Leila). She's worked for HGTV for many years. There are 7 directors that film for House Hunters alone and I like her style. She likes people to get to know us, so she likes to film us doing what we like to do together (in our case it was riding bikes down the canyon, thrift shopping - which they didn't show on film, walking downtown Sugarhouse. Watching other episodes, sometimes they don't show the couples interests, so we're really happy with the producer we got! She's also filmed House Hunters International and that's where she met her husband. Talk about a dream job. Except for the fact that you're away from your family for weeks at a time - she said she loved traveling but didn't love being away almost 24/7.
Bruce: the camera guy (above). He's got tons of experience filming shows. He currently works for other shows on HGTV, not strictly House Hunters. He's alos worked on many other shows, like Elimidate which is funny because in our interview (in the living room) they asked us how we met, we told them on elimidate but not the show, he was like, "hmm, I was gonna say I don't recognize you". He's hilarious and got along with him super well...we've kept in touch with him after the show and he's given us advice about our kitchen along the way. We just texted him last week and showed him after pictures. We haven't decided on a back splash so he's giving us ideas. He's an architect on the side, I think, so he's way into this kinda stuff.
Chuck: the sound guy. Probably has the sweetest job because he gets to fondle women everyday...putting on our mic's I mean. He had to go down my shirt at least 2-3 times a day while filming. In the morning, after lunch, and anytime my mic sounded funny. It was awkward at first but he's super respectful and announced every time he needed to touch you and where. Since he was the sound guy he was ALWAYS able to hear what we were saying. Even when we weren't rolling sometimes he'd forget to take his headphones off and could hear us a mile away. On day one after they filmed us in the storage facility, I was still inside the facility when the rest of the crew, including Eric, was outside the facility. He heard my phone conversation with my sister when she told me my Papa passed away. It was hard to hear, especially since we weren't done filming day 1 so I had to deal with it later that day. He knew what had happened before I walked up to even tell Eric. Later that night is when Eric told me he heard my conversation because Chuck looked at Eric and said, "Uh oh, this isn't good. Who is Cynthia talking to?". After day 1 I tried to be careful about what I said while miked up. After 5 long days of filming it was nice to have our privacy back!
Right before we started filming, Bruce mentioned that neither of the outfits we were wearing were going to work. I had just bought a cute mustard cardigan with NO patterns but the knit made it move on camera. Stripes and checkered shirts can be ok as long as the lines aren't really close together. Well, Eric's shirt didn't work either. I was so mad because I had my outfits all picked out for the week and that threw a wrench into everything. Be on camera alone is intimidating, but not knowing what to wear makes it worse.
This is what I ended up wearing, not the cutest but it had to do. Got my mic on and I was ready to do this.
But first I had to touch up my lipstick.
When it came to Eric "working from home" they wanted to emphasize how inconvenient it was that we didn't have a home office for Eric by having Leila cry in the background (we mentioned this in our application video, that when Eric works from home I have to take Leila outside when she gets fussy so his customers don't have to hear a screaming baby in the background). I didn't think this would be hard to do because she's generally a fussy baby. However, when it came time for Leila to "act" she didn't want to cry. I felt so bad but we tried everything. Finally, the producer suggested we make her a bottle then take it away. Oh, that worked like a charm and I felt so bad doing that to her. The worst part is, they didn't even show that part in our episode. The part they showed of Leila crying was when I was in the office and didn't want her to cry, but of course that's when she put on the real show for the camera.
That's a major reason why we moved out of the storage business, it was just too hard to manage the office and a toddler at the same time.
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| "Looking" at potential homes in our price range. I hated this part because it was so fake. We already found our home and this part felt so staged and unnatural to me. |
These are the pictures Shasta took of Leila while we were out in the storage facility or when we rode our bikes up Provo Canyon to film the "activity" shot.
The end of Day 1 was exhausting and we were so glad to have one day down because it gave us a better idea of what days 2-5 would be like. We were confused as to why we were so exhausted when we hardly did anything, then Susan enlightened when she said, "it's because you had to be 'on' all day". Yup, that was it.
1 comment:
Te whole thing looks fun and very intimidating at the same time! You always look beautiful and your house looks super Hip!
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