How many crew people were with each family?
ALAIN: One – Thomas! THOMAS: Well, 80% of the footage you see in the finished film was shot by me, as cinematographer; 400 days of shooting over two years. We did have some local crews — a handful of people — to do some extra shooting while I was not there, but also to get the families, and the babies, used to being filmed. I had to make sure that after a few weeks they wouldn’t be amazed by the camera and the sound equipment. The father of the American baby, Hattie, is himself a cameraman so he did a little bit of filming of his own daughter. You mentioned 400 days; how many hours of footage were shot? THOMAS: We had 400 hours of rushes, which over 400 days of shooting is not that much compared to other theatrically released nonfiction movies. Some days we wouldn’t film at all, some days we would film for hours. Our concept was to be with the families, to watch and to wait for something unusual to happen, something never to be replicated, something that no crew could ever go back and
