And 'ACTION!': My Pre-Production Tasks as a Producer
As I have already reported in a previous blog entry, I did not only get my preferred job as a cinematographer on my own visual idea, but I was also assigned a producer on Lynley’s idea with the current working title ‘Action!’. As many of you might know, the producer’s role on a film is one of the most stressful jobs in filmmaking with a lot of personal responsibility that requires organisational talent, grit, and an ability to anticipate issues before they arise. With this at the back of my mind, I was both thrilled and a bit anxious whether things would work out as intended.
After being assigned to the roles last Monday, I spent the next two days not doing much for both projects. Apart from setting up a production meeting for Lynley’s idea for Thursday and relate all the paperwork on my own idea to Chloe to give her a head start, me and my crew for A GOOD ONE was still finalising the edit that needed to be submitted for the RTS Awards on Wednesday afternoon.
However, this changed with our very first production meeting on Thursday, in which we not only discussed the last possible amendments to the script, but also talked about the amount of our overall budget and the number of characters needed, the special tasks and research that our sound operator and editor Katie as well as our second editor Craig needed to undertake, and set a time for Nathan (the crew’s cinematographer) and our director Lynley to discuss the storyboard, visual style. I furthermore asked Lynley to provide me with her five-line synopsis of her script once it was finished as well as with character descriptions. I then decided that we would convene again every Thursday between our sessions at uni to get a feel of what needs to be done and get the ball rolling.
After the meeting, I scanned the minutes with all the relevant tasks and send them to our crew for further reference, before I sat down and filled out both our Kodak Competition Entry Form and the Kodak Stock Order Form, the latter of which I send to our programme leader to send to Nahemi Kodak on our behalf.
As it was obvious from the beginning that a lot of tasks needed to be managed, blocked, and planned for and that this would entail a lot of paperwork, I sat down on the same evening and wrote up a somewhat chronological to do-list of both my roles as a producer and cinematographer to ensure that nothing would be forgotten. I then blocked out slots in my schedule for the upcoming ten days and planned as many tasks as I could sensibly fulfil in the time slots given. I did not go further than ten days, as many of the tasks lying ahead would require action from another party that I could not reasonably estimate (and thus allocate) so far ahead in time.
However, the very next day, our lecturer asked us to do the very same task again, this time only in digital form, using boxes in Microsoft Office Word and grouping tasks together. Since I am rather a pen and paper-kind of girl, I simply created a digital copy of my handwritten notes in the same chronology and left it at that. This resulted in the document as you can see below:
While I realise that this might be confusing for other people to work with, I personally do find the chronological order rather suiting to my needs. As you may already have inferred from the key given in the document, the lovely Apple-apple marks tasks that are already done, while the green highlight tells me that I already accommodated these tasks in my diary. The blue highlight is a reminder for me to both keep an eye out on any decisions that need to be made by another person before I can effectively schedule them and the yellow highlights remind me to assign tasks and remind my crewmembers of tasks that need to be done or outsourced.
On last Friday, I finally started collecting and controlling all the paperwork that was required from me as a producer. This not only served to ensure that I know what I was doing but also to double-check on whether I forgot any tasks from my humongous to do-list. I then created a template for Payment Receipt List roughly based on samples that I researched on the internet to serve me and my crewmembers as evidence of paid and repaid budget. The list looks as follows:
Finally, I was able to already write up the casting calls as Lynley had sent me her script, synopsis, and character descriptions, and placed them online in the three Facebook Groups: North East Theatre Practitioners UK, Four Bridges Casting Calls, and Casting/Extras/Crew/Model Calls North East UK.
Already early the next morning, I had received emails from two suitors that were both interested in two of the three roles. In the course of that same morning, another suitor popped up for the third role and just like that, I was able to schedule auditions. I sent the applications to Lynley first and received the green light for all three suitors as well as a confirmation of her schedule in return.
I thus booked out the studio on both afternoons of Monday 5 November or Wednesday 7November and invited our three actors for audition, sending them the script as well as a description on how to reach us at The Northern School of Art. Two of the actors confirmed their participation, but sadly, the third one declined on the basis of having misread the planned shooting dates and being on vacation at that time.
Then, in order to master the balancing act between cinematographer and producer, I contacted Chloe not only with a synopsis of my idea and character description for the casting call, but also to schedule for location recces. As it turns out, both projects that we are working on, will be taking place at Preston Park, so we decided to carpool and drive down there together with our cinematographers and sound ops on Sunday 4 November.
Having scheduled the location recces, I then proceeded to send the breakdown of my script to my Sweeney Todd-group for further reference before I then updated the crew for Lynley’s idea about the progress and asked both Nathan and Lynley to schedule for a discussion of the visual style. After that, I updated my schedule and my to do-list for now, as all I could do at that point was waiting for more actors to apply and wait for others to solve their tasks.
Yesterday, after not hearing from any more actors, I went online again and renewed the casting calls in the relevant groups to ensure maximum exposure. I then proceeded to print out all the relevant documentation for e.g. location recces, auditions, casting list, and filled out a booking out form for both our location recces as well as our auditions next week.
I then created a breakdown of Lynley’s script to ensure that I did not miscount on the number of actors, as well as to gain a general overview of all the props required. I then listed all the relevant props and looked for purchase options online in case no one of our cast or crew owned them themselves and passed this list by Lynley to ensure that she agreed with my choices so far and to settle remaining questions.
Afterwards, Lynley and I decided that we would also use the studio bookings I made for auditions on Monday 5thand Wednesday 7thto start blocking out our shots on digital cameras. Since we only have a limited number of auditors but a total of eight hours booked out in the studio, we decided that this would be the most sensible decision in order to get a feel for the timing and the duration of the TV ad and make last amendments to it, before we get our actors to rehearse their parts in a proper blocking session later on.
Yesterday afternoon then, I met with the other producers of all our projects to gain a general overview of our schedules and whether they clashed with each other. As every single one of our crewmembers is engaged in two roles and at least one project, it will only be a matter of time until this becomes a problem and I wanted to make sure that we plan ahead to avoid this as much as possible. It turned out that none of the other groups was yet in any state to call for auditions as they were still lacking replies to their casting calls.
Finally, today, I finalised the minutes for the producer’s production meeting yesterday and set off to a meeting with the production designers for the Sweeney Todd idea on Chloe’s behalf. With Georgia Bell and Tyler McKeown from LVL 5 Production Design, I thus discussed the production of possible props such as Victorian style leaflets, posters, and shop signs and asked them to send their final quote to our producer Chloe for budgeting purposes.
The remaining tasks of this week entail thus:
The renewal of casting calls in the relevant groups
Holding another production meeting with my crew to keep us all updated
The collection of budget and acquisition of props
Booking out the equipment
The acquisition of the remaining extra for Lynley’s idea and
Doing location recces both in my function as producer and cinematographer,
before we start into the process of auditions and blocking.
As you can see, a lot has happened in the past week since the assignment of our job roles. I’m just hoping that everything will remain rolling this smoothly once we start rolling the camera!