What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

 

When planning a block of shooting you have to take a lot of things into account. More things than people realize, I believe. You have to schedule the day, making sure to take note of the weather, the sunrise and sunset times, the locations, the distances between locations, how long each scene and shot is going to take and how much time you're going to take setting up each sequence. Then there's the comfort of the actors (we don't want people waiting around doing nothing) and there's the time that goes into feeding them, ensuring that they have bathroom access, ensuring that everyone is good and happy. Then there's the equipment, you have to source it, make sure that there are people who can use it, make sure that there is a way to power it.

Yeah, planning a production is a lot more effort than simply getting everyone to turn up, and even if it wasn't, just getting people to turn up is stressful. So, with all of those things in mind (and more, we haven't even touched on make-up, costumes, lighting, rehearsals etc.) you can appreciate how frustrating it is when something doesn't go to plan. Or someone isn't prepared. Or things just begin to fall apart around you. These three examples, and more, are perfect ways to describe our second block of shooting on Follow The Crows.

Of course, the weather is always going to be a problem. We have fairly unpredictable weather, and the call sheet and schedule tend to be ready around three to five days before the day of shooting, so the weather is subject to change. We had terrible weather on our second block of shooting, but, amazingly enough, it wasn't the weather that was our biggest problem. No, an I can't fault our cast and crew for soldiering on, all of them were exceptional on location, even though it was wet and horrible and miserable and things were stressful (we were loosing light, fast) they all remained in part, happy to carry on with their work.

No, what our biggest issue was was technology.

If it wasn't the generator packing in and refusing the power our lights for the night shoot, it was the camera battery freaking out or the microphone refusing to co-opoerate. Suffice it to say that everything that could go wrong did go wrong on our second block of shooting, and suffice it to say that I'm pretty unhappy about it all.

And, as if that wasn't enough, we couldn't soldier on into the later stages of the night because we were going to be loosing our DoP and camera at nine o'clock on the dot. You'll understand me when I say that I was about ready to punch a hole in the wall or flip a table over. Yeah, I was fuming, in fact, to the point where I wouldn't have batted and eyelid if steam start expelling from my ears and fire came billowing out of my mouth.

This blog is supposed to be two things: a way to publicize and generate interest in the independent feature film Follow The Crows and, perhaps more importantly, an honest look at what goes on behind the scenes when making an independent feature film. If were being honest (and that is kind of the point), I'm unhappy with most aspects of the most recent block of shooting. In fact, all I can find praise in is the epic style and look of the shots and the fact that our cast and crew worked their ass off in the horrible English weather.

Everything else is a total wreck and we'll be taking a long, hard look at how to overhaul our production methods so that this type of thing doesn't happen again.

I would like to put special mention our there to a couple of people in our crew who really saved our asses - Darren Potter, our DoP was down in the mud right to the very end, shooting the shit out of our actors, making sure that everything looked as fucking awesome as it possibly could (even if he did leave at nine and put and end to shooting), Ashely Robson, our runner for the day, who managed to pull us out of certain doom and oblivion by sourcing a second generator and some flood lights for zero cost, and Marcus Starr, our producer, who was here there and everywhere trying to ensure that everything worked, even though it didn't.

If Follow The Crows is a look at society stripped of all meaning, living in a bleak, uncompromising and violent world (which it is) then we certainly captured the spirit of the movie over this production block. I have absolutely no doubt it'll look incredible (sound my be an issue - ugh), but at what cost? I'm sure everyone was very glad when we decided to cut our losses and call it an early finish, eager to get home and hop in the bath to warm up.

Everyone, that is, except me, the crazy Director, if we had it my way we'd have shot on into the night, rain or shine, and gotten everything we needed.