Growing in Greece: Security Guards On Segways

February 10^th, 2011

Mouroussi, Greece

The Mall

Meeting in the lobby at 7:30 and loading the bus with the twelve other crucial members of the crew was a little exhausting after our long day at the airport yesterday. We shuttled to The Mall and got there early enough to set up and speak with the owner of the restaurant/bar we were using, Be Twins. He was excited and welcoming until a security man on a segway came in and rained on our parade. Exclaiming that we were only allowed to shoot inside the bar with no outside mall sections, our plans were a little dampened.

Luckily our crew is pretty sneaky. Every time the security guard left we snuck the camera back into the mall area and shot the scenes we needed. When the guard came back we moved our camera back inside: as simple as that. Either we would have come to The Mall for nothing because our transitions from the terminal to the bar wouldn’t make sense without shots of the white marble floor, or we bent the rules a little and hurt no one. Rules are made to be broken, right?

Greece is all about striking right now. Buses, metros, pharmacy’s, law offices, and doctors are all on strike. Why? Because they don’t like the rules. They don’t like how the government is being run and how much they’re getting paid so they’re breaking them. They’re refusing to work some days, shutting down their businesses, rallying in the streets. This is how they get things done here, they don’t just sit back and hope someone else will come up with a solution, the citizens find the solution. And that’s what our production did today. We realized we were harming no one, the rule was silly and we weren’t breaking any copyright laws, so we did what we had to do. Awesome life lesson, right?

Segways are just nonsensical business,

Susie