Tabula Rasa

The second of a short series about my experience as a first-time producer on a short film. Part 1 is here.

The director and I were both painfully aware of one significant fact during the whole of pre-production and the actual shoot: I was the only person in involved who did not have any professional experience there and I was pretty much running it. If you’ve ever seen that old Channel 4 series called “Faking It” well that’s pretty much how I felt. Fortunately for me, there are a whole library worth of books that tell you a lot about what’s involved and I’ll recommend some of those later on.

Pre-production was quite hectic. The first thing we needed to do was try and get some sort of funding together for the shoot. The director’s fiancé was putting up most of the finance but not necessarily all of it. Although at the time I recall their being a fair few schemes we could apply for, most of them had either run out of money already or weren’t looking to support any new projects. In the end, we funded it ourselves which, although not ideal, at least meant that the project could go ahead. There were four significant cost areas that we had to accommodate.

1. Equipment hire. The director is very visual so using a mini-dv camera was not going to be adequate for her needs. We ended up using a broadcast quality DVCAM although she said that in retrospect, she would have preferred to have gone for something better still. Add onto that extra lenses, tripod, digi-slate, dolly and track and the cost did escalate. On the plus side, the director was owed a favour by a friend of hers in the movie lighting industry so we got the usage a hell of a lot of professional lighting equipment for nothing.
2. Location. We were lucky in that the majority of the film was set in one location which happened to be a doctor’s surgery and as the director’s fiancé was a GP and had his own office in the local medical centre, we were able to use a real one for free. However, there was also a scene set in a swimming pool which cost us a location fee. Most councils (especially in London) have people to deal with shooting permits and location fees but unfortunately these seem to be largely non-negotiable (although more of that later).
3. Actors. It is more than viable to get actors to work for nothing and many might be willing to do it if they’re just starting out and want something on their CV. We felt that we wanted to pay the three cast members as much as we could afford.
4. Everything else: wardrobe, makeup, food, travel expenses, a parking fine and, of course, stock for the camera and sound. And insurance which is very important. Of course, if you’re doing underwater shooting, like we were, your insurance is going to be bumped up but nevertheless, it’s very, very important. Especially when you’ve got £20k of lighting equipment to look after!

Other than that, most of pre-production involved casting calls and auditions, scheduling and all the legal stuff (actors contracts and the like). I spent a lot of time emailing and faxing the script to people and ringing agents to try and find a suitable cast (including those of Paul Bettany and Kerry Fox). We made full use of the Shooting People bulletins and got a lot of CVs through. A hell of a lot of CVs which we spent the best part of an afternoon trying to whittle down to a manageable number.

In terms of production tasks during the shoot itself, there was not so much to do from what I recall, apart from making sure that everybody was happy and knew where they were meant to be and what they were doing. I ended up spending most of the two days we were shooting acting as the boom operator for the sound man. I tell you what, I have a lot of respect for people who do that for a living – it’s a seriously tough job. Sometimes a single take might take several minutes and all the while you’ve got to hold a bar that’s not actually as light as it you might think in an awkward position above your head and as near to the actors as you can while all the time keeping it out of the view of the camera.

And that was the shoot: two days (with an extra one for pickups as the result of a technical error which meant that a lot of shots were out of focus) and it’s a wrap.

Next time – what I learnt from producing a short film.

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