Pre Production Update

So we shoot in little over a month. And things are humming along from an organizational standpoint. I have an AD, Rachel who has been a great help getting basic documents in line.
Contact Sheet – Every production needs one of these
Call Sheets – Since this is a four day shoot I sat with Rachel and we looked at the strip board and came up with call times and lunch times for each day. I find it very important to follow general union guidelines for this. Meal breaks after 6 hours an d12 hour turn around after wrap to next day’s first call. This is only fair, especially for a volunteer crew. Rachel typed up the notes and I spent about an hour entering them into call sheets for each day so everyone knows the schedule.

I run an exchange server so I set up distribution groups with email addresses and contacts in those groups for Cast, Crew, Extras and All. Send mail to one of those groups and everyone gets it.

I scheduled for this Saturday, to continue shooting basic story boards on the still camera. Benito will join me and we will get as much done as possible as the spouse is entertaining that evening.

The following Saturday, Benito, Mark and I will shoot another lighting and exposure test to finalize our lighting. One thing I forgot to mention in the previous post was that I was very pleased by one thing about the previous test. The scene does not look like it was lit. It looks natural. (Except the sickly tarp blue fill)

I have scheduled a production meeting with all players for the 18th.

I posted an ad on the local Indie Film board asking for a script supervisor but no one answered the call until a couple of days ago. A guy asked if we were still looking and I said sure send me your resume and references. After a bit of around and around it turned out he is a noob with some PA experience, but wants to try. So unless the references come back negative what the hell, he has a car so I’ll give him a shot.

The spouse and the child have been running lines but we need to start real rehearsals now so I am trying to schedule that in along with the neighbor.

I still need to find someone to pose for a ‘grip and grin’ shot of the mom receiving the writing award. We have some nice meeting rooms here at the office with podiums etc I just need to find the bodies and get permission to use them.

I need to meet with my art director and find an old recycle bin for a prop as well as get props in place.

The spouse needs to get here wardrobe for the “Scullery Maid” scene

I need to go to champions and get some makeup and powder.

And contact and confirm with the extras

The list goes on but it is not overwhelming.

Having sent out the call sheets I did get one scheduling conflict with one of the actors. She sings in the choir at the cathedral and the new season starts the weekend we need her. I scheduled the party scenes for Sunday of day four starting at 9:00AM but she will be unavailable till 11:40 so I looked at the strip board and shuffled a couple of scenes that she was not in and viola it all works out with out changing the actual call time.