‘Smile 2’ | Anatomy of a Scene

“Hi, I’m Parker Finn. I am the writer, director and one of the producers of “Smile 2.” This scene takes place in the back half of the film, and we are with the character of Skye Riley, a pop star played by Naomi Scott. She’s the main character of the film. And we are jumping into this scene when she is at a peak level of paranoia. So in this scene, Skye is encountering this group of smilers. We’d never done a full group before. It felt like a really exciting new thing to do in this film. So this moment when they are chasing down the hallway after her. My production designer, Lester Cohen, and I had designed this mirrored hallway because we knew that by sending this horde of dancers down the hallway, all the reflections was going to exponentially grow the amount of faces and arms and limbs we see. These dancers that I got to work with and my choreographer, Celia Rowlson-Hall, it was this incredible collaboration to create something that felt both like a menacing attack, but also at the same time dance. For the bulk of the scene, we had 14 dancers and they’re all performing this choreography, but they all also had to be employing the smile throughout. So it was really about coaching them, how to do the smile, but also how to hold onto it while doing all of this movement. But also how we have Naomi, who is performing choreography, but for her to make it look not like choreography, like she’s just suddenly being attacked and doesn’t know what’s going to happen next.