Critical Reflection

Reflection.

This project has been one of the most difficult but has also been the one that I have learnt the most from. We've faced a lot of obstacles as a team as well as individuals but we've worked really hard to get the project to this stage and we now know that if we decide to take it further into production once lockdown is lifted, we have the resources for that and have done all of the testing that we can possibly do.

What went well?

This project had a lot of obstacles but there are elements that went well for us and we were able to work with.

As a team:

Test shoots

The test shoots were really productive for us, especially the fight scene as this was able to show us how to safely carry out this shoot. It was also a good opportunity for Ebony to learn how to use some of the equipment and how Esme could block the scene. It was ultimately all we had to work with visually and it was good to have these to refer back to when thinking about what we can improve when it comes to the real shoot days.

Viability

We worked hard in the early stages of the project to make sure that we would be absolutely ready to go into production. We had planned for a very early shoot in February so that we would have time to do reshoots and make sure the film was perfect in post, but as the date approached we realised that this was unrealistic and we moved the dates to the end of March. By this point, COVID-19 wasn't really in our thoughts as the cases were only at eight on 10th February. However, the day before we were meant to leave for the rearranged dates, the TV studios went into lockdown and we weren't able to collect our equipment. We weren't sure how long the studios would be locked for and so I made the decision to cancel the Airbnb as early as possible to see if we could get refunds back from Airbnb for the cost of the flat because it was a large chunk of our budget.
We did everything we could to ensure that the project could go ahead in March and we were absolutely ready at that point. Although it's a shame that we had to move the shoot from February, it was definitely the right thing to do and showed that we were taking responsibility for the shoot to make sure that we had everything at the point that it needed to be.

As a producer:

Locations

I was really happy with my arrangement of locations and I made sure to maintain in-person, phone and email contact to keep them in the loop of where we were at. I was working as professionally as I could and also made sure to build a rapport with the location managers that were most likely to pull out such as the pub and the shop. We went for smaller businesses who were less likely to have more guidelines that we would have to follow and I met them in person on multiple occasions and made sure that I had answers for all of their questions and concerns by taking risk assessments with me and being prepared to show them previous work. We were lucky that they were all very friendly and welcoming. Here are examples of my email correspondence with the representatives of the Diver's Arms pub.

Problem-solving

I think I did well with problem-solving on this project. We unfortunately faced a lot of obstacles but as producer I felt that I took professional responsibility and was able to navigate these issues (that I'll be talking about in the next section) well. I made sure that we continued to work as a team despite these problems.

What could have gone better?

Pre-planning

I feel like if my pre-production work had gone smoother I would have been in a better place earlier in the project and we might have been able to film on our planned dates. However, for the speed at which I work, realistically the shoot would have been running off of a much earlier script version and I wouldn't have been able to make the improvements that I did with the additional time that I had. 

Danny Jon-Howard, cast for the role of Martin.

Cast

Unfortunately, our cast member for Martin had to back out at quite a late stage. I should have seen this coming and I should have taken the initiative of recasting much earlier. In the pre-production stage, Paul showed hesitation with the dates and was clear that he would prefer to work only on weekends and have limited weekdays working. This proved to be more and more of a problem the further we discussed new dates, and we ultimately recast him with a really great character called Danny who Esme had the chance to work with over Zoom. This should have happened much earlier on in the project and although it ultimately didn't cause any real issues it would have been a lot better to be able to workshop with Danny in person which we ultimately weren't able to do.

COVID-19

Obviously, this caused a huge problem for our shoot as it meant that we had to go into isolation and group gatherings were illegal. There wasn't anything that we could do about it, but I felt that it was worth mentioning because it also put a barrier up for my written work even though this doesn't seem likely. The lockdown put a hold on my ability to access the library (from which I usually do the majority of my work) and also knocked my confidence, because it removed my motivation to write about the film. I struggled to find content for the project from this point because it felt like it was fruitless, where usually we had been working towards a greater goal (a film or other 'professional' achievement). Like I say, this isn't something that we could have improved in terms of what we could make, however, I feel that I should have taken more responsibility earlier on and tried to boost my motivation for my written work. I could have achieved better outcomes had I carried out more online research and potentially had more online meetings with the team, but it also felt like I didn't have much to work towards since the pre-production paperwork was at that point useless to a film.

Motivation

Following from that section, my motivation severely lacked in the early stages of lockdown. This had many reasons, mostly down to my poor mental health state. However, I managed to face this problem by working side-by-side with Esme and we could talk to each other and motivate each other. If I hadn't lived with her this would have been in a worse place in terms of my quality of work and I'm glad we were able to work together through it. 

What did I learn?

Obstacles aid growth

Although this was a tough project, I felt like I grew the most both professionally and in terms of opening my horizons. I feel that I showed good evidence of being professional through the obstacles where I could have let it ruin the project, and I worked closely with Esme to make sure that we both were achieving what we needed to make this project work. We got the project to a point where, as soon as lockdown is over, we would be prepared to get straight back into production and finish the film to a really high standard. I grew in confidence a lot, just through having trust in my ideas and putting them onto paper rather than questioning them too much and having concerns about viability which was my biggest hold-back on a lot of my projects. I feel like I now have the confidence to take any small production to screen with my experience of navigating obstacles that would normally knock my confidence. I was also really proud of the script by the end of it and I feel like I got it to a very achievable state.

The importance of teamwork in TV

Working so closely with the team really proved to have so many benefits to us all. We've always worked closely but we all put our personalities and emotions into this project by being open with each other and understanding eachothers' mindset. I now appreciate why crews work with people that they've worked with before, like Chibnall and Stokes. They even lived together so that they could do location recces together and so that Stokes could understand where Chibnall was seeing as he wrote. This is very similar to how myself and Esme worked together as we did location recces well before the script was finished. This was a methodology that I discovered on this project and it was very beneficial to the end script to have real locations in mind, because it seemed more personal to the locations rather than just put wherever was convenient. It wasn't just any pub that we planned to film in, it was a pub that we had carefully selected and written the script to. Everything had been made for each other and it worked out really well.

Conclusion

In all, I actually have a lot of sadness about this project. I had such a strong confidence for the film and I really felt like it was going to be a huge highlight of my showreel. Aside from the film, I knew I could have worked harder on my written work but with the current state of the way that we had to work it did prove difficult and I'm proud of what I even managed to do. I know that I could definitely finish this film in the future if that was something that I wanted to do professionally and I will definitely consider it. I am really proud of our work as a team and I think we handled it all like a real production crew. My future plans seem more achievable now that I've proven to myself what I can do against the odds and I know that we are looking at working together professionally in the future, which is a really good outlook. I can't wait to see where this leads us.