When Shira decided to drag her husband into taking the food stamp challenge with her and making a film about it, she and Yoav both thought that they would be making a five or ten minute video. But after starting to edit their footage of their shopping trips and various ultra-cheap meal adventures, they realized that they had stumbled into something bigger. They then embarked on a second round of filming to integrate the views and experiences of food justice advocates, people living on food stamps, and other people who could provide additional insight into the experiences and policies surrounding federal food assistance.
Yoav and Shira’s food for the week
Shooting most of the film themselves with Panasonic DVX and HVX videocameras required some creative cinematography – including placing the camera on a shopping cart atop a bag of rice. In other scenes they had some help from camera operators Roy Wanguhu Kiiru, Ben Ferrer, and Levi Welton.
Producing and editing the film as a married couple (and an often-hungry one at that) was not without its unique challenges. The co-directors admit that sharing creative control in the filmmaking business, as in marriage, requires patience, compromise, and mutual respect for your partner. When they hit a wall in their process, they took a break and found things got easier with a little something in their stomachs.
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