Finished up filming for TLC and The BBC.

Remember in August when I posted this? Apparently since the BBC documentary will also air on TLC, they wanted a bit more footage for the U.S. version, so they sent a second crew out to film us. The crew included our Director/producer Gwen Isaac, of Midnight Swim productions, Cinematographer Gavin Brennan, and our sound technician, whose first name was John, unfortunately I didn't get his last name. As we got acquainted with our crew, Christi was beside herself to discover that Gavin had worked on the Deadliest catch on the Time Bandit boat and John had worked on the crew of the Ghost Hunters series on SyFy. These are a couple of the family's favorite shows and everybody had lots of questions for the guys. While the last post was titled "The British are coming!", in this case our crew were from New Zealand; (Gwen), Australia; (Gavin) and America; John. Gwen was Fabulous and has been all over the world, Christi did not enough time to question her too much.
It was a pretty good day, and the kids had a lot of fun playing soccer in the front yard for the camera. It was funny as Gwen kept telling the kids to kick the football and the kids would look at her and she'd have to say, "soccer ball". Afterwards, Christi and I did a pretty candid interview regarding our ability to have so many kids and our experiences with birth and such.
All in all it was a pretty good day and I hope the footage they got makes for a great documentary when the final cut is done.

The British are coming!!

Actually, they were here on Sunday, but that wouldn't be a very catchy title, would it? The film crew showed up around 11 am and although Christi and I were a bit nervous, we were as ready as we would ever be as we stepped into the living room to meet them. Our fears were quickly allayed as the director and producer turned out to be very nice and very laid back people. Nat, the director was charming and friendly and the kids took to him immediately. Emma, our producer, had talked extensively both on the phone and via Facebook to both Christi and I, so she was more familiar, but it was great to actually meet her face to face. Our cameraman, Julius was quite a lot of fun and probably the kids favorite. With them also were Kris and Alan, both locals (from L.A. and Murrieta, respectively) a couple of nice guys also. The day went very well and the kids performed amazingly well. There was no pressure and Nat guided us through our various shots with ease. The day flew by and we were sad to see them go, but anxious for them to get the film back to London and finish the documentary, the quicker to see how it turns out. I was able to get the following pictures using the amazing camera that they provided me for filming the birth. I'm no photographer, but with a 21 megapixel Canon, I could hardly go wrong.This one was taken by Julius, it's all 17.9 of us on the lawn under our miyamosa tree. They had us wearing those orange nametags for the first couple shots.
Rebekah gets her closeup as Julius operates the camera, Nat the director is at far right and production assistant Kris is behind Nat. Trevor is at the table waiting for permission to dig into the pizza with Emma standing up in the middle of it all. Harper is at the left, talking with the sound guy, Alan.
It was great time and we had a lot of fun.

An anniversary, of sorts

It was 3 years ago, on Saturday that we began the filming for our TLC show Kids By The Dozen. Christi and I have been reminiscing a bit as our little Laura Mae (She was in the belly for the filming) has been asking to watch the show very frequently in recent days. "Watch Mommy-Daddy!" she says and we or one of the kids will bring up the show on the DVR.

Christi and I were talking about that first day, meeting the crew and the producers. We had already met Laura Swalm by that time as she had come out for the initial meeting with the executive producer, Bernadette McDaid. On the first filming day, however, she arrived with an assistant, two cameramen, Dane Lawing and Ronny and our sound guy, Brad. We were introduced to everyone and over the course of that week, we got pretty familiar with them. Christi reminded me how nervous she was on that first day, compared with 4 days later, we came to expect to see the crew sitting around the living room every morning, Starbucks in hand waiting for us to get the kids up and presentable. We had a lot of fun filming that show, we got to see a lot of cool insider stuff that happens when filming TV shows (we still point out stuff on other shows) and we made some friends. Christi is still in touch with Laura via Facebook and Chad still talks to the production assistant Trevor.

It was really a great time and I think we'd do it again if the chance came up.