The military has come up with a new way for families of service members overseas to ease the heartache of having their loved ones away for so long. We went to  Bangor to find out more about the 'Flat Daddy' which is a life size cut out of their missing family member that spouses and children can take with them where ever they go.

We flew up to Bangor via Boston early in the morning and started shooting at Bangor's Air National Guard base with a woman who worked on making Flat Daddies. We were given an escort that would follow us around and make sure we didn't do anything we weren't supposed to do, but usually that's done by a public relations officer. Our escort was an armed Air Force soldier. I'm not sure why we needed an armed escort - I wasn't going to do anything crazy like steal a F-16 or something. We did an interview with the woman and she showed us how Flat Daddies are made. She had a full size photo of her husband, who is in the Air Force, printed out for demonstration purposes. We wanted to get shots of her cutting the photo out but while she was doing it her son kept getting in the shot and worse, he was doing his own cutting. He pretty mnuch butchered the photo. So I had to ask her to print another and do it all again but this time without the kid. In all it was a boring setup. They put us in a conference room to do the filming and it was pretty stark. If you see the piece you'lll know what I mean.



After filming at the base we went to meet Mary Holbrook who has her Flat Daddy right beside her where ever she is. We filmed her at work and at home with the kids. I rode with her in her van and tried to shoot some stuff with Flat Daddy but it was pretty dark. My Anton-Bauer Ultralight wasn't the best thing for shooting in a vehicle. It's pretty bright so I bounced it off the ceiling to difuse it a bit. I was worried I would blind her shooting so close to her. We got to her house and then I was able to get some nice stuff of the kids in the kitchen and playing checkers.



At one point when the kids were having snacks at the kitchen table, the oldest son passed a granola bar to Flat Daddy who was seated with them at the table. Later, we all went to the grocery store to shoot a sequence. I just walked in and started shooting - I wasn't sure how long we would get away with it before we were stopped by the manager but I was suprised when the manager finally asked us if we had permission. We told him we didn't get prior approval then he just walked away without saying a thing. He never came back and nobody stopped and asked again about what we were doing.



We shot some nice stuff at the store and left for the youngest son's school where he and his mom had a meeting with his teacher. We shot a few minutes of the meeting and we called it quits. I shot four tapes worth of Flat Daddy and that was enough for me to edit a 2:30 piece the next day back in Washington.

WATCH THE PIECE HERE : FLAT DADDIES

        

 

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