The Challenges of Child Actors- TEETH

The Challenges of Child Actors-Teeth. When I wrote TEETH I thought it would be fun to include a lot of scenes with kids since that is a big part of my experience. Other than one scene with two babies, most of the kid scenes involve the 4-10 age group. It never dawned on Russ or I that the 4-5 age group would be so tricky.

The first weekend of filming included plenty of kids. We quickly learned that our 7-10 year olds could easily separate film from reality. However, the 4-5 year olds really struggled with the blurring of those lines. Asking them to do something out of the ordinary often caused confusion and forced us to try a different approach. Sometimes, we had to cast different actors who felt more comfortable doing things (our own kids), but in the end it was a great learning experience for everyone. Moving forward, I think that we will stay away from the 4-5 year old age group in general, but it is dependent on child and parent.