One of the biggest challenges for myself is organising the group and meeting deadlines. As everyone in the group is new to their roles I feel this may make it slightly difficult when trying to get work handed in on time as everyone is still getting used to their roles and responsibilities. Another of the challenges is getting to grips with the scheduling, planning and preparation that goes into all aspects of the shoot. I haven't yet familiarized myself with how to do this and feel this will definitely be a challenge to myself and my organisation. Ultimately the responsibility of ensuring the film is completed is the biggest challenge to me.
How will you achieve it?
Ensuring that everything is organized and
deadlines are met is probably one of the biggest aims; making sure that
everyone is engaged in the production of the film from its pre to post
production and meeting deadlines will definitely make it easier for the crew as
a group when it comes to the actual shoot and editing process.
What do you need?
There are quite a few things I’ll need to
look at. With regards to the actual planning of the shoot and the scheduling of
when scenes need to be done Michelle the producer who has been working with the
Northern Stars Academy producers, has given me a number of sheets with formats
and layouts to help me map out the information needed to plan the shoot. I also
made sure to gather the contacts of everyone that I would/may need to contact
throughout including those of my crew and the actors. I also need to make sure
that resources such as the scripts are available to myself, the crew and the
actors so that I can start the planning of the schedule, the actors can
familiarize themselves with the script and the crew is able to make the
necessary plans within their specialized area in preparation for the shoot.
How will you monitor your progress?
There are so many deadlines and 'milestones' throughout the course I think it is important to set personal tasks and goals so that I can reflect on how I dealt with them and how if at all I can improve.
There were a number of occasions especially towards the beginning of the course where I had a chance to reflect on how I could better deal with certain situations in the future.
- Towards the beginning of October the first 'big' challenge presented to the group and myself in particular was the completion and submission of a script. The script situation was pretty difficult. I was aware everyone was relatively new to their roles so didn't want to stress people out by repeatedly getting on to them. In retrospect however, I think I should have been more aware of the difficulties other members of the crew were having. This was definitely a learning curve for myself as it made me re evaluate how I acted in a leadership role. It forced me to become more confident when asking 'where people were at?' ensuring work was completed on time and also reinforced the importance of getting team members to discuss if they were having any problems or needed help. Even though it was a really stressful situation at the time, in the long run learning from those mistakes was a great help in making sure everyone communicated with each other for the rest of the process.
- Casting was a definite reminder of the importance of being organised. As we did not have a completed script by this point I made sure that every other aspect of the day had been organised from how we greeted the actors, to the questions we asked and making sure the resumes were put into corresponding order. The start of the day was admittedly shaky but once I became confident with greeting the actors and with the questions I asked it definitely became easier. The time we had put aside as a group to plan out how we would proceed through the day was so useful and I feel on reflection, a demonstration of how I was adapting to my role
- The residential was a chance to put all that I had learnt from my meetings with Michelle to what had happened previously into practice. I felt with this I had definitely improved in how organised I was. I ensures that I, and the rest of the group had each others contact details as well as the actors and mentors etc. I made sure all the provisions were in place for what we needed the day before the shoot for example making sure sound and camera had all equipment ready, scripts and call sheets were readily available, actors had been informed of any details for example what they needed to bring/wear and I also made sure that any amendments to script or call sheet with regards to how much footage we managed to get shot was done so the night before. On the actual shoot I was confident in letting the crew know when we were running over time and once we'd gotten ourselves more familiar with what we needed to do on the second say it ran much smoother.
(Photographs from the shoot)
- Editing was another important part of my role. It took a while for out group to get the editing right so I had to make sure everyone was available to come in for extra sessions. Understandably there were difficulties in getting everyone in at the same time as we all had prior commitments such as school, sixth form etc. However I feel this was, for me, a time when I had to be most confident in my leadership role. I was aware getting the film finished on time was a large responsibility of mine so made sure that at least me and Tom (Director) could come in and get it finished. This definitely showed improvement in my organisation (having to balance this with sixth form work) but also editing skills as I wasn't sure at the beginning whether I'd have the chance to work with it.
- The festival pack which I assembled at the end of the course was good indication of how far the group had come from initially getting the script together. I asked Tom for a plot summary and I got it much quicker than I had done so with the script. Throughout the project I made sure to keep a record of peoples information in a folder along with the scripts and spreadsheets so that I could easily fill the pack in.
- The premiere was definitely the ultimate test of whether or not I'd reached our goals. It was a success. As a group we'd managed to get the film in on time and it was good to see that mine and the groups work had paid off!
(stills from Taxi Driver, Actually)
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