First Major Project - Pre-production Retrospective

To start this post I will apologize for my lack of recent entries, for the last two weeks i have been focusing upon my work, and is it only now that i am fully recovered from the process.

the bulk of my pre-production process lasted between monday the 2nd and Thursday the 5th. during this period I sourced actors/crew, finalized the shooting script, schedule and generally made-ready for my shoot, previously I had booked my equipment and requested access to my locations. the following paragraphs will explore what I did during that week in relation to this project. (note I had found myself somewhat ill with a severe cold during this period)

• CAST AND CREW- MY primary foci for the week were two-fold, properly confirming the actors/crew i had already, and finding actors to complete my cast, both of these where done fairly promptly, having already figured out my schedule it came down to simply making sure that the persons involved where fully briefed, including having a copy of the script and shooting schedules. I did have some trouble finding my two leads, however by Thursday evening I had both confirmed and briefed. unfortunately i could only find one backup lead, this lead to issues later on, during the production process. My final workforce was due to consist of the following: two lead actors, four extras/runners, one camera and one sound.

• SCHEDULING- I had planned to shoot across three days for approximately two hours a day, split in half by a short break for refreshments, this method was chosen due to the timing issues I ran into, see HERE for more info on timing. while my shoot was split over three days it was actually split into two parts, part one, which was shot on Tuesday the 10th, and part two which was to be shot on Wednesday and Thursday that week. my reasons follow, I had one primary location where the bulk of my script is set, i thine have several smaller, secondary locations within very easy reach of each other, the primary location was to be shot over the two day period and the secondary locations, on the first, single day period.

• SHOT LISTING- this was of a lower priority compared to preparing the practicalities of the shoot, and received little attention when compared. this was a mistake because it meant that i didn't have a clear focus, if i had listed better then the production workflow would have been drastically more time-economical. Anyway my shot lists for each shoot day where fairly simple, and rough, a basic outline of how and what I wanted to shoot on each day in each day in relation to the scenes I was planning on shooting, I kept it rough because of my experience with things going wrong, while i had accounted for most uncontrollable events, I had no preconceptions as to how much can go wrong on a small scale shoot, by keeping it simple and not micromanaging I hoped i would be able to get around any small, on the day issues.

• ISSUES ENCOUNTERED AFTER PRE-PRODUCTION, BEFORE PRODUCTION- I had serious casting and scheduling issues, the first appeared early friday morning, I lost two of my extras(the third had to cancel later on) due to deadline constraints(the mistake of using students as actors), on friday I left for home, a weekend away from the stress to take my mind of things, when I returned from my time away, I had lost my backup lead and one of my primary lead actors, I re-cast the character late monday evening, after having run out of options, I cast my boom operator as Shaz.
• the second major issue reared its head monday evening, this changed the proposed technical quality greatly, I had to scrap my early shoot times completely due to the inability of my cast to arrive at the required time for the day-for-night shooting blocks as scheduled.