It Happened One Night

The idea of recreating this scene from It Happened One Night starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert had been rolling around in my head for several years when it suddenly resurfaced a couple of weeks before we shot these.  The costumes were a hastily thrown together affair using just what we already had around so I think we did a pretty good job on that front (thank goodness these were being switched to B&W).  The location was found on the day of the shoot.  I had a backup location in mind but was very happy to have found this one between Bartow and Winter Haven.  Due to the layout of the location we took some liberties with camera angles that I would have preferred to have not needed to take but overall I'm absolutely thrilled with the results.  Our biggest challege was that all these shots were taken from across the road.  This meant that inbetween traffic I would have to set the timer on the camera, dash across the street and try to get into position before the camera went off and pray that no cars drove through as the shutter snapped.  I will lead here with the unedited shots, then some edited shots, then the two inspiration photos and their reconstructed counterparts.

Took this first shot then went to compare it to the inspiration shot.  I had some problems getting us postioned just as I wanted us.  Here my body faces closer to the correct direction but my gaze should have been towards Claudette...er...Tracie.  From this distance you don't notice but my pants are black, my vest blue, my coat a black and white herringbone pattern and my trenchcoat navy.

 

Forgot to set the timer.  Ran across the street and sat there waiting for the flash to go off but it  already had.  Oops.

 

Attempt three I don't think either of us were particularly happy.  Tracie is angled poorly and my facial expression is all wrong plus I was positioned poorly as well.

 

Another shot where I didn't even make it across the street.

 

This is the shot we used in the final product.  Still not perfect but probably as close as it was going to get.

 

Our secondary shot which I added the night before when I found another picture from the same scene that we could do.  In this shot I like my facial expression better but I was unhappy with my arm as was Tracie.  Only later did I see that her eyes were closed so thank goodness we shot another.

This is the one we ended up using.  My expression is not quite as good as the last one but still doable.  Tracie's expression is perfect which seems to say, "This is the man that's going to return me to civilization?"

 

These three are just cropped from the above originals because I liked this outfit so much (at least in B&W).  Shirt, vest, wool jacket, tie, thank goodness it was less than 90 degrees but I was still soaked.

 

Inspiration One

Final Product One

Inspiration Two 

Final Product Two