“Hello, I’m Parker Finn. I am a writer, director and one of the producers of “Smile 2”. This scene takes place within the back half of the film and we’re coping with the character Skye Riley, a pop star played by Naomi Scott. She is the predominant character of the film. And we jump into this scene as she reaches the peak of her paranoia. So on this scene Skye meets this group of smiling people. We had never done a full group before. It felt like a extremely exciting recent thing to do on this film. So that moment after they chase her down the hallway. My production designer Lester Cohen and I had designed this mirrored hallway because we knew that if we sent this bunch of dancers down the hallway, the variety of faces, arms, and limbs we might see would increase exponentially from all of the reflections. These dancers that I worked with and my choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall, it was this incredible collaboration to create something that felt like each a menacing attack but additionally dance at the identical time. For many of the scene we had 14 dancers all doing this choreography, but additionally they needed to smile the entire time. So it was really about teaching them how you can get the smile, but additionally how you can hold it through all these movements. But we even have Naomi performing choreography but ensuring it doesn't appear like choreography, like she's suddenly attacked and doesn't know what's going to occur next.
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