Planning

Planning.

 Prior to the shoot, we must spend time planning everything in detail so that we can better anticipate any obstacles.

This process mostly begins in the pre-production stage, however, there are more specific planning processes that we go through right at the beginning of the production stage to ensure everything is prepared for filming.

Shooting schedule

The production schedule is what will aid me in the shooting process, keeping track of time and scenes. I've made a new production schedule (above) from the one I made during pre-production (below), as that one was far too much detail. It would have been somewhat useful, but having each individual shot mapped out was more the job of Ebony (camera) which she did when we started production.

I separated the shot list out into each scene and based it off of the original production schedule and similar to the original timings. I also made use of weather symbols for each day to make it quick to see and plan ahead with the shoots. 

I made decisions on timings based on the time that the scenes are set, as well as what would be convenient for the actors as well as travel times to locations. I considered that Paul (Martin) has to travel from London each morning, and I also considered that, with outdoor shoots, members of the public will be walking around more in the middle of the day than early mornings or late evenings, so I tried to work around this also. 

Contacting contributors

For this project, we need a lot of contributors. There are multiple extras needed and because we really want to do well on this project and make it look as professional as possible by filling in the background.
I began casting for all of the roles back in November, but it took a few job postings to get enough interest from people who were close enough. I am trying to preserve the budget as we are paying quite a lot for our main actors, but we feel that it's worth it because they're perfect for the roles. However this does mean that we need to restrict the amount that we can pay extras by ensuring we hire people who live close to the shoot location.

I used Starnow for the extras adverts, of which I posted 3, one after the other. I did it this way because it meant that I could go through the applicants periodically and keep tabs on who we had for which roles. I also had a spreadsheet of the roles that I needed to fill with the name of the actor and their contact information. This kept things simple and I was able to easily see who I still needed. You can see the spreadsheet here under the 'Shoot Organisation' subtitle.

Props

In terms of props, I've left this for a while as I didn't want to jump into buying one thing if something better comes up, or we have to make changes to the script due to locations or people. In this case, Amazon Prime comes in handy (next-day delivery). During a production meeting, we made a list of all of the props that we would need, including ones that we already had but needed to pack (such as fake blood).
When buying props, I also had to keep an eye on the budget. I have already made an Excel spreadsheet that does the maths for us when we enter the amount that we have spent, then takes that off of the amount of budget that we have left. 

Budget

Speaking of the budget, this was a really important aspect of planning. It's very important to keep track of the budget and where it will be at when we pay for the travel of all of the actors, extras, and charity donations in place of paying for locations. I've updated the budget as often as possible, and so far we are on track to have enough money to pay the travel.

In conclusion, the planning processes for the project are the most important part, particularly for my role. The parts that I've found to be the most important have been the shoot schedule and the budget. They are the aspects of the project that have kept everything else in line and affect the shoot as well as the running of the project.