Reflective Journey through the production of 'Unscripted'
This project for me was probably the biggest project I’ve ever tackled. Before this project, I’ve worked on a few other productions involving just a small crew and a small cast. Usually, it was with people I knew and was completely comfortable with. I had worked with a few of them in previous trimesters but it was as I said before all small projects. I never in a million years thought I would be put into a group where I was able to work well with every single person. In this blog entry, I will be giving you all an insight on how my end of the production went; its hiccups, its frustrations, and its overall growth.
Doing the genre of horror was something I wasn’t keen at all on doing. I can barely watch horror movies without covering my eyes during the entire movie. This in itself was a huge challenge I had to overcome. We started the trimester with the assignment of roles and I chose to be the producer and assistant director. I have never done producing before and I thought it would be a good learning experience for me, I was skeptical though as I thought I wouldn’t like the role as it involved a lot of paperwork and money handling; something I am not really good at. Oh, so I thought. Once our crew was assigned our roles our lecturer gave us the genre that our filmed needed to follow.
We had the choice of a psychological thriller or a horror film. Before we decided on it we watched a couple of movies to get some inspiration from them. One was a psychological thriller and the other was a horror shot in a found-footage style. Said found footage style inspired all of us and we decided to do a horror movie.
Once that was decided, as a producer I made the decision to create a trello board. A trello board is an online app where you can add cards and deadlines for people to complete tasks. I thought this would be a great idea as it would help everyone stay on track as well as inform every department on what tasks were completed and how to proceed further with other tasks. Our crew heavily used this app until the shoot date as we were able to also upload all the documentation needed for each department and it really helped all of us keep on a schedule.
By week two we had the base script which helped me plan further on how the following weeks should be. Once every department and the directors got the script I gave them more deadlines so that we were able to meet the visions of the co-directors. What was most difficult was scheduling weekly meetings with the crew. With any production, at first, some of the crew weren’t showing up to meetings nor were they giving us feedback on their respective tasks. It was frustrating and it was something that really needed to be dealt with. Separate meetings were then conducted to see and solve the cause of this issue and after drilling it into their brains the following week, they started to attend all the meetings they needed to.
One thing I found hard that had to solely with my work was the script breakdown. This was the first time I had ever even heard of something like that. Our lecturer taught us the way to do it and I struggled at first. I am not really well versed in math so the page count was annoying at first. After practicing it and constant corrections I was able to get it. WITHOUT THE PAPER METHOD! Oh, the paper method is when you fold an A4 size sheet into eighths and according to the scene, it would have a page count. I had to quickly learn all this as I had to travel as well for my best friends wedding. Luckily I was lucky enough to have someone take up a role in co-producing with me whilst I was gone.
Budgeting was another aspect of the role I found to be a little complicated. There were so many factors to what needed to be budgeted and how much we needed. We raised around a thousand eight hundred which was pretty decent. Everyone in our crew pitched in money and we were able to reach that much! Money flew though! A thousand went for location, five hundred went for food, two hundred went for the art department and I had some leftovers for emergencies. Those emergencies being the talent needed gas and transport. We didn’t have a budget to pay the talent so we gave them some compensation so that they would choose to act in our film!
I had left to attend my friends' wedding and when I got back all the production documents were given to me. There was a mix-up and the “updated” script breakdown was not the one I was supposed to use for scheduling the shoot. This lead to the worst first day on a shoot I’ve ever been on. We were all so disorganized and It was my fault. I should have reviewed everything handed to me before working on the schedule. We got two to three scenes done… Our lecturer was not having it. After the cast had left we all sat down and had a meeting on the issues of the day. Myself and our lecturer worked on a brand new schedule which we had to complete before the third day.
The next day we shot seventeen scenes… sixteen hours of work, but the best thing was how determined every single person including the cast were to complete all the work set for the day. We had two breaks during that day and we worked on the super tight schedule. We achieved something we didn’t think was possible. The next day went as smoothly as the previous and we were able to finish shooting the entire film!
At the moment post-production seems to be going smoothly and I’m really excited to see the film! I learned a lot during this production. But it wasn’t from the good work I learned but mostly from the hiccups and the faults we had. I learned how to make a breakdown sheet properly, how to budget, how to make a call sheet and most Importantly not to panic when things go sour. Keep your cool work with your team and find a solution.