How do directors get babies to follow a script?

The full narration of the video.

The babies in movies can't understand a single line of the script. You snap ten photos of your kid and nine are blurry. So how does a film crew catch that perfect smile? Because the director never expects the baby to obey.

Filming a baby is more like filming a wild animal. A wildlife photographer doesn't ask a lion to take two steps left. He waits, shoots hundreds of frames, and keeps the best one.

Same with babies: the camera keeps rolling, and every smile, glance and yawn gets recorded. That flash on a face after hearing or seeing something has a name: a reaction shot. The editor drops it right where it's needed: an actor speaks, and the next shot shows the baby grinning.

The 'he understood' you see is really two separate shots joined together. But a wildlife crew can wait for months. A baby on set gets nowhere near that. In California, a baby from fifteen days to six months old can spend only two hours a day on set.

Actual time in front of the camera: twenty minutes, max. A nurse and a studio teacher must be there, and bright lights can't stay on him longer than thirty seconds at a time. When twenty minutes isn't enough, productions hire twins.

The little daughter in the sitcom Full House was played by twin sisters taking turns. When one's time was up, the other stepped in. The opening credits even listed them like a single person. So how do you get a baby to look the right way?

An adult stands off camera in that direction, shakes a rattle and calls his name. Some sets hire a baby wrangler, a kind of translator, who turns what the director wants into something the baby wants to do. For shots that just won't work, it's a doll wrapped in a little blanket.

Older kids understand, but memorizing a whole script is still hard. So good directors often skip the memorizing: they feed a line on the spot, or turn the scene into a game. On E.T., the director shot the story roughly in order.

The kids lived the story day by day until the goodbye, and the tears came naturally. So behind every child who seems to follow the script is a room full of adults following the child. Next time you want a smile, don't say 'smile.' Hide behind your phone, play with him, shoot a burst, and pick one.

Try it and tell us: how many seconds did it take to get that laugh?