My hardest directing job so far...

It wasn’t Manchester United or putting a b-boy on top of the Matterhorn for Red Bull. They both come close. But close is not as hard as my daughter’s 8th birthday party. My wife had the genius idea of having a Super Mario Kart championship. And believe it or not. But if you have to handle 16 kids, but only 4 of them can play at the same time... drama is coming. Big time. 

Imagine you have 16 actors going rogue. At the same time. In the same place. That’s what was happening. But at least the actors are able to go by themselves to the toilette. Not all of the kids did that. Between catering, serving drinks, handling out candy and explaining the rules for the tournament, we (luckily my wife was there to be the assistant director) we're juggling the chaos and at the same time escorting some of them to the restroom.

Once the rules were set and each and every player had chosen their character, car and parachute (which can take ages)... the race was off to a good start. 4 were playing 8 watching, cheering, yelling and laughing. The sound level was so high, every sound technician would have had nightmares of peaking levels throughout the race. 

Right now we were deep into the second act when the turning point was about to hit. 2 of the 4 were eliminated. Which meant no more playing for them. It was clear to us. But not to them. “Just let me race again. I’ll win next time. Why not! But that’s not fair! I WANT TO RACE AGAIN!!!!!” Just a few examples of what started after the first race. And did not stop when the second race was already full on. As soon as some of them were eliminated, they either tried to reenter the race or started to distract all the others. 

Hair and makeup would have been a disaster too! After the small in between break (Catering would not be the appropriate name) we had to clean a lot of chocolate makeup on almost all of the faces.

Lucky us we did not have a DoP on set. If he or she would have had one single chance to get the shot... that would have been luck. If you ever worked with young kids you know exactly what I mean. Getting them to repeat a take is like a coin flip. But with much worser odds than 50/50. So imagine 16 of them and no first AD to help out. 

In the end we had a winner, who cried because she did not like the first price. A runner up who was happy as he got the first price from the winner as a gift. A good mood and hell of a party! And the insight that yelling is not the way to handle your actors. But a tiny voice won’t always do the job. Specially not if 16 toddlers are yelling, crying, laughing and throwing candy at you at the same time... GOOD FUN! ;)

But the best thing was yet to come! The clean up! It took us at least twice as much time to clean than to prep the party. The party itself was only 2 hours long. It felt like years. But it’s over now... at least for one year. Then... we will see then...