No industry was quite as affected by the pandemic as the restaurant business (outside of healthcare of course). Restaurants that were long-established struggled to make the transition to carry out only. So when 9th St Bistro in Noblesville Indiana had to close their doors to indoor dining when they had barely even opened them a week earlier, it was a feat of creativity to change course and save their brand new venture. We'll let you watch the full short documentary on Hoodox to see how the story unfolds but we'd like to share a few behind-the-scenes lessons or takeaways on storytelling.
Don't be afraid to discover the story along the way. There is this impression that all storytelling and filmmaking is crafted by a visionary that has every detail in their mind before they even set foot on set. Not true. Make a good, detailed plan, and then be prepared to toss some of it out the window when something is uncovered during production. Of course, you don't always have the luxury of being that open, but don't assume you're doing it wrong because you find yourself doing some improv along the way. It's incredibly important to recognize when something isn't working and change course.
Trust and transparency are so important. Early in the first stages of production, we had a small but awkward situation between a few people that were involved. It wasn't a big deal and would be boring to recount here, BUT we immediately got on the phone with Rachel and Samir and talked it through. We admitted where we might have inadvertently caused some confusion and discomfort. That moment built a tremendous amount of trust. We asked a lot of the couple throughout production and there were times when we pushed them outside of their comfort zone. I'm not sure that would have been possible if they didn't trust that we were being transparent and honest with them. They never questioned our requests because they knew from the outset that we were going to own our mistakes.