Thanks everyone. It looks like I'll end up taking the headache-inducing path of doing everything by the book after all, in spite of what I can assume will likely be a negative impact on the level of naturalism captured in the scene.

I suppose I might be able to use framing, blocking, and selective focus to minimize the number of identifiable John Q. Publics in the scene and thereby end up needing maybe only two or three releases. I suppose it's possible and maybe even aesthetically preferable, but it's going to be difficult on a technical level.

I guess that in the current social climate, I might be sued for just about anything. Someone might think my breath smells bad and sue me for the "mental anguish" it has caused them. It's enough to make me want to smash my head against the wall. I guess I'd be well advised to avoid leaving my garbage at the curb or taping down mic cables anytime soon. :)

Thanks.

Jarrod,

Today's 'legal climate' is certainly different, mostly because today's technical possiblities are boundless. Right to privacy, right to publicity, private property,public property, documentary rights, 'newsworthy elements, and 'fair use' are all tricky terms of art.

But really, you touch on the heart of the issue when you mention it's all about risk assumption.

How much risk are YOU really willing to assume? You put all this time and effort and money, (not to mention that of your actors and crew) into a film, which contains a shot or two that might blow the effort?

Basically, you're asking yourself to accept one of two premises.

"This film will NEVER be successfull enough to become high profile, make money and therefore become a potential target for litigation" (the betting against yourself line)

OR

"All the time money and effort that I and the crew expend, are worth this one scene, and if it keeps it out of festivals or distribution,or costs me enormous wads of cash to settle, at least we'll have a movie we can watch ourselves."

Which is it?

Not to muddy the waters, but...
 

I can't picture how this could happen.

If shooting someone on their porch, not only are they "using" private property (their own), but you are also shooting across private property (their's) in order to tape them.sitting on their porch. (Presuming I'm shooting from the street or sidealk).

If anyone can explain this, please do.

Contradictions like this "chicken or the egg" situation are what prevent me from shooting in public, and are giving me a headache. (I guess I'll just have to turn my entire house into my own private studio and lot, and bring in talent when I need it. Wonder what my wife would think)?

Yikes! I'm losing my mind.

If it's any consolation, what *is* natural in the scene often doesn't look or feel natural on the screen and conversely, what seems the most natural on the screen is anything but in real life. The classic example is the "whoosh" of the Enterprise fly-bys in StarTrek. Complete violation of the laws of physics, in real space travel it would pass in complete silence, but the scene simply wouldn't be believable on the screen without the whoosh. If you're going to go whole-hog and use 'extras' in the scenes, with direction it shoudn't be too hard to get even amateurs to present a natural appearance. And your dialog recording is going to be MUCH cleaner if the background characters are feigning speaking rather than actually talking - you add the background 'buzz' as a walla track later in post.

I have to admit that this is a good point--another example would be the foley applied to fistfights. These are auditory examples, though, and I would argue that visual naturalism is at least a slightly different kind of animal. I still think, in this particular situation, it would be easier to get a naturalistic *visual* atmosphere if the people in the shot (especially the servers and other employees) were just going about their usual business. I think I'm going to try to just minimize the number of faces in the shot using the techniques I was talking about above--maybe I'll frame and/or block the shot so that only one other table (at which extras are seated) is visible, so that any unsuspecting John Q. Publics in the shot would only be walking across the frame with their faces outside the top of it.

Another good point, but I am more than willing to allow for ADR and detailed foley as a "plan B" if the "live" dialogue turns out to be unusable. In other words, I'm willing to end up having to recreate and micromanage the audio if I can get the visual end of things to come across naturally. I'm sure I'll end up doing at least a little ADR for some other scenes in this project, so doing so for this scene wouldn't really add all that much in the way of extra headaches in post.

Replacing faces in post
 

What we need is a feature to Replace Faces in post production. Kind of like how they can have a blur track a face, except instead of a blur, it would substitute a cgi or stock face.