Melissa Lozoff's Movie Makers featured in episode
BY DAWN BAUMGARTNER VAUGHAN
dvaughan@heraldsun.com; 419-6563
DURHAM - Tune in to "Kate Plus Eight" on TLC Monday: night, and you'll see the kids making their ·own movie, led by local actress Melissa Lozoff, who· also directs her own program for kids called Movie Makers.
The name of the episode is "8 Movie Makers " and Lozoff and assistant Sam Kirkpatrick do the narration for the show, usually voiced by Kate Gosselin, mother of ·the ·eight children first seen on "Jon and Kate Plus.Eight," before the couple divorced.
The 7-year-old sextuplets and their twin _older sisters made the movie as a surprise for Kate, who appears more when the kids' movie· "premieres" on the episode. Lozoff and Movie· Makers produced a six minute movie for the television show and a 15-minute movie for the family. Lozoff, who has a oneline part in an episode of "One Tree Hill" this fall, filmed in Wilmington, said she got a call last year ·from a "Kate Plus Eight" producer. The producer's daughter had been through Lozoff's Movie Makers program in rural Orange County; which includes summer camp, and thought it would be a good idea for the show. Lozoff signed a confidentiality agreement so she can't comment on the private lives of the Gosselin's or behind the scenes of the show. The first time Lozoff was flown up to Pennsylvania for filming, she waited with the crew for five days before coming back home. Her trip coincided with Jon Gosselin's attempt to stop the show. She flew back up for filming in March, then again in June to film the kids' mini premiere.
Lozoff said it was great to work with the show's crew; and that Kate was always nice to her.
"Sometimes you forget the cameras are there, other times you turn around and it's right in your face," Lozoff said. Occasionally, the television crew equipment was in her movie shots, so they worked around each other. She said that making a movie with eight children who are siblings was stressful, and family members tend to get on each other's nerves more easily. The children like the cameras, she said, but moviemaking things like acting and blocking were new to them. "Of today's reality shows, I think this is more true to reality than other shows, The crew lets things happen naturally," she said.