Poppie’s Café: Of Props and Shooting Schedules
This was another week filled with many challenges, but also with lessons. I knew right from the start that our project would be ambitious, however, I did not think that it would become THAT ambitious. But let me start from the beginning.
Our Shooting Schedule
On Tuesday, it turned out that our shooting schedule could actually turn into more of a hassle than we initially thought. After the audition for Teacher Central, our producer Chloe called for an emergency production meeting. As it turned out, the actors that we had cast for Poppie were not fully available on Mondays due to another commitment at uni. Whilst Chloe had tried to negotiate as much as possible, we were still looking at only five shooting days for a 20minute short film with roughly 160 different shots. These five days so far were:
- Tuesday, 19thMarch (Café)
- Wednesday, 20thMarch (Basement)
- Saturday, 30thMarch (Bedroom)
- Monday, 1stApril (Café)
- Tuesday, 2ndApril (Café)
Since our main location, as well as our backup location, would only let us film on Mondays and Tuesdays, we were in desperate need of another Monday that we could use, especially the 18thMarch. However, there was also the issue of one LVL4 project filming on that date, taking out a good amount of the equipment we would need. And two of the actors whom we had cast as well.
Damn.
Our Storyboard and Script
Since we had too many shots for too few shooting days due to lack of actors’ availability, Lynley and I checked the storyboard again and tried merging as many shots as possible without creating gaps or destroying continuity. However hard we tried to think and rethink though, only very few shots could be merged or deleted. If anything, we realised instead that our storyboard could benefit from more shots, rather than less.
Then we looked at downsizing the script to make room. However, since Lynley’s script applied the ‘magic number’ three in its composition throughout its entirety, taking anything away would have compromised the story itself.
Double-damn.
Our Game Plan
So with the lack of actors, lack of equipment, lack of flexibility regarding location, AND a massive amount of shots that could not be reduced less we butchered the script, the only option we were left with was to negotiate with the LVL4 filmmakers and students and ask them to reschedule.
While Chloe set off to do just that, I went and pre-emptively booked out equipment for all the days mentioned above plus Monday 18th. Since 13 productions across three year groups are happening, I figured that this was the safest bet if we did not want to be faced with another issue to sort out on top of everything else. Thus, I furthermore booked out equipment and studios – the Photography Studio 2 and the Film Studio – for additional test shoots on both Wednesday 13thand Thusday 14thto be on the safe side and have another two chances at practising the really difficult shots for me.
However, later that day, and after I handed in the relevant booking out forms to our technician demonstrator, I received note from Chloe that she had gotten us Monday 18thby getting the LVL4’s to swap this shooting day for another.
Hooray, good times!
Our Props
Another challenge that we were faced was the acquisition of props. Here, we had a bit of help from our lecturer’s who firstly informed us that there were still props from a previous witch’s set stored around in another building.
With our second lecturer then, we ventured into the building and poached all the props that we could possibly need, thereby saving us at least £50 of budget. Amongst them were a chair, several bottles and utensils, a table, and ‘shrinked heads’ that would fit marvellously into our set design and storyboard. We took them out and put them into our Base Room until needed further.
Creating an Even Bigger Game Plan
After that adventure, and a quick lunch, Lynley, Chloe and I sat down to figure out a sensible and balanced shooting schedule, now that we actually had six full days of filming on set.
However, even with the additional day poached from the LVL4’s, there were still issues to sort out, some of which were:
Actor availability at some days (with one child actor and the issue of the 2ndMonday)
Average amount of shots per day
Order and continuity of shots
Required equipment and space within location and
The questions of possibly splitting up scenes
For the longest time, solving this riddle seemed like untying the Gordian Knot. Whenever we thought that we had come across a sensible plan, we found at least one of the above reasons to cross our plans, with the order and continuity of shots being the most prominent one. We contemplated a series of different solutions and attempts, but whatever we did, continuity seemed to bite us.
Thus, I decided to sketch out a preliminary plan and make continuity the prime dictator of what scene is going to be shot when. Counter-intuitively to that, I then started with the scenes and locations that would be the least problematic (and which had their own days anyways) to get them out of the way first, noting the scene number on the side to remember that they were checked off.
I then moved onto the scenes that required to be filmed at a certain time of day and entered them as possibilities into our schedule. I started with the evening/night scenes and then proceeded onto the scenes that needed to be shot in the morning. After having progressed to this bit, and noted down the scenes that were taken care of, it became much more obvious which scenes required a similar time of day.
As I was further progressing through our list of scenes, I regularly checked back on the amount of shots that each scene required to double check that we were not grouping together two massive scenes that could not possibly be done within our set timeframe. In the end, we checked back on our little list on the side that we had every scene covered, before we ventured into fine-tuning certain aspects, such as tweaking lunch time by an hour or leaving an additional hour in between here and there to accommodate for any issues that might come up along the way.
With this technique in the end, it took us about 2,5 hours in total to get a sensible and realistic plan done that is not too tightly scheduled, but does allow for additional time to get cutaways, sort out possible issues with equipment, get the set (re-) dressed, or catch up with any other form of delay. And this is what the – hitherto still chaotic – plan looks like as of now:
Since this task has done all our heads in, I furthermore planned to an additional check over the weekend to make sure that we did not overlook any issue due to fatigue and to make the schedule for principal photography as airtight as possible at this point.
My Lessons Learned This Week
One lesson that I have learned this week is that shooting schedules can be a massive pain, and that they should best be done together with the crew in order to avoid any oversights in general. In this case, it was really helpful to have two more brains working on this task due to its complexity. Furthermore, it was really pleasant to experience how far negotiations can go to help you get your film project off the ground. And that this does not only apply for the immediate production crew, but also across multiple production crews.