What Came First... The Chicken or the Oatmeal?

The question for the ages of what came first ... "chicken or the egg" had puzzled even Aristotle and Plato. But I can say with certainty, that in our photographs, the chicken came before the oatmeal.

We were assigned a project of shooting our client’s super-strong, insulated shipping container, which gets used to transport fresh foodstuffs.  Our layout called for this container to be in the environment of an ‘interrogation room’. We were interrogating chicken and concentrating on how fresh it was after being shipped!  We designed our room, per layout to look like an old time gangster movie. Of course, as always, the prep time takes 1000 times longer than the shoot. We had about 3 - 4 days of framing, mudding, painting and final detailing of our room…compared to one afternoon of shooting our container with a variety of ice, chicken parts, lighting, etc. It looked great…even had the beaten up, hanging reflector lamp giving a gradient fall-off of light in our scene.

When the ‘romancing of our chicken’ shoot was complete, I really couldn’t see immediately tearing down our room. It was a ‘piece of art’.  I wanted to make up another story. A gang of comedic “hoods” who were interrogating their hostage was the answer. I had worked with all the actors who were in my gang, in either photo or film, so I certainly couldn’t put my friend’s feet into concrete!  Now, for the “Chicken or Oatmeal” answer. We used oatmeal in the tub of instead of “concrete”. He said it felt a bit weird, but I pointed out to him that oatmeal is great for rough, dry feet! With a little direction, our talent channeled directly into their roles!

So in our photo stories, the chicken did come before the oatmeal (puzzle solved)... and we all had a second great time shooting our interrogation room scene. The chicken and egg thing...I feel the same as my friends Aristotle and Plato.