Girl Meets Farm has been out in the world for a day and a half now and life is totally different. I’m exhausted, dehydrated, disoriented, I have a headache... oh wait jkjkjk that’s just what I get for trying to keep up with all of the young people on this bachelor party romp. But actual jk, I’m fine, not hungover, and life isn’t different at all except that a lot of people have now seen my gold Buick boat and I feel exposed. I was like... should I rent a cooler looking car? And they said no, the Buick boat is great. And I think they were pulling my leg but it’s too late to do anything about that now I guess. 🤷🏻♀️
One of my favorite parts about this TV process has been learning what goes on behind the scenes. Starting from weeks before the crew arrived up through, well, now, I’ve been learning so much about what happens on the other side of the camera and it’s fascinating and cool! Except for my first gigantic teenage-style breakout since high school due to wearing way more makeup than normal. But other than that, I want to tell you about the behind the scenes of Girl Meets Farm!! In no particular order, here are some of my favorite tidbits:
Every item that has a logo or brand name written on it has to be “Greeked.” I suspected this would be the case because ever since being fascinated by the groceries on 30 Minute Meals with Rachael Ray, which looked like they were taken directly from the Kohl Children’s Museum fake grocery store, I have not seen one branded label on a cooking show. I never knew it was called “Greeking” though and it was cool to watch the art directors and culinary team find creative ways to cover labels. For the fridge, we printed out pictures from my wedding and grabbed a photo booth shot of Michelle and me and taped them over the Smeg label. Color coordinated washi tape and gaffer’s tape covered the KitchenAid label and book titles, and tiny dots of red nail polish covered up the Our Family logo on spice bottles. After the shoot I kept most of the Greeking on as souvenirs.
My kitchen got a facelift. In the days leading up the shoot, the art directors wove their magic wands all over my kitchen and turned it into the most put together version of itself. They completely decluttered it and arranged the open shelves using a mix of pieces I owned already and new pieces that they brought that fit in with the vibe. Even though they had taken photos of what it looked like before they rearranged so that they could put it back exactly how it was when they left, I had them leave it the way they arranged it because it looked too good!
I was able to assemble my own wardrobe. I don’t know how this works on other shows but I am very picky about clothes so I was glad that I could waffle and hem and haw by myself in the Gap dressing room in the weeks leading up to the shoot. I had to get two of everything in case I spilled. Pretty much everything I wore came from Gap or Old Navy, and then I wore a bunch of new aprons from my friends at Enrich and Endure.
Each recipe was filmed twice. The first time going through the recipe was focused on getting clear lines from me describing the steps and talking about the dish, and the second time was focused on getting closer shots of my hands adding specific ingredients, mixing, chopping, etc. Before getting started on filming a recipe, we shot “grabs.” Grabs are closeup shots of my hands grabbing tools and ingredients. So if you see me say something like “I’m going to grab the harissa” and then you see my hand grabbing the harissa, those two shots were actually taken like 20 minutes apart.
After filming a recipe, the cameramen took beauty shots of the dishes. These are the styled closeup photos that you’ll see in the recipe teasers and online with the recipes. Since I wasn’t in these shots, this gave me about 15 minutes to go outside, review my recipe notes for the next recipe, stuff my face with Trader Joe’s mini crackers, and hydrate.
Every morning I spent an hour in our guest room having my hair and makeup done by Jane! It was the best start to the day. We listened to Rex Orange County, I’d sip my coffee, and she told me all about working as a makeup artist in Los Angeles. She had the coolest stories. About halfway through hair and makeup, Kelsi, a production assistant, would come in with my breakfast, a green smoothie. I was such a Healthy Hannah compared to the pilot shoot, when every morning I got a breakfast sandwiches delivered to me.
Dinner was usually leftovers from the shoot or takeout, often eaten in bed because we had nowhere else to sit. Our dining room was filled with cameras and monitors and our living room was set up with props. So we’d eat like meatball sliders and watch Mad Men in bed, cause that was another thing, we got to move the TV from our kitchen into the bedroom! Eggboy is completely against having a TV in our bedroom but because we had to move it out of our kitchen, I convinced him that there was no other logical place for it to go. I felt like a kid on a sick day watching The Price Is Right, it was the best thing ever. After dinner I’d get ready for bed and then review all of my recipe notecards for the next day.
Ok so speaking of recipe notecards, I had a lot of fun organizing all of my notes. Like, straight up school-supply-shopping-on-steroids fun. The weekend before the crew arrived it occurred to me that the best way to keep my recipe notes in order would be to have them in a binder, so I went directly to Target and Michael’s and got all of the prettiest binder making materials. Omg it was so fun. I went with a pink and purple theme and got enough stickers to hand out to the crew in case any of them had any sticker emergencies. And then I bought Gelly Rolls for the first time in 20 years and nearly cried in nostalgic happiness. I made one binder section for each episode and at the beginning of the section I included a page protector for all of my notecards and stickers and then within the section I kept the script that had a flow of the episode all written out and any other related materials, like the sheet music for the Bach that I played with my dad for the episode where he visits. Each section also had a designated Gelly Roll color. During the filming I kept my binder in a designated spot on a table behind the cameras and then would bring just the notecards with me to the kitchen and keep them in a drawer close by so I could reference them at a moment’s notice.
Alight, those are all of the things I can think of for now! If I think of anything else, I’ll tell you in my upcoming Girl Meets Farm posts, where I plan to share recipe outtakes!! And if you missed the premiere on Sunday, that same episode will be playing again tomorrow! Check your local listings!
-Yeh!
All photos except for the cell phone photos by Chantell and Brett!
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