That's A Wrap!

We completed the production shoot last Friday, exhausted and in need of a good sleep. Having started at 7:00 AM on the last day with most of the crew evolved into zombies (we finished at 12am earlier that morning), everyone including myself was relieved to have finally completed the four day shoot. Nothing feels better than wrapping up a shoot.

Overall the four day shoot went fairly well, minus a few tiny issues that came up throughout the course of the week. Such as my production designer falling ill on the second day and not being able to show up for any part of the day, leaving the already frazzled First Assistant Director and myself to spend more time on designing the set. Another 'tiny' issue that came up was the lack of time I organised for each day, which really wasn't my job in the end but for some reason it felt like organising the call sheets was my responsibility. Everyday apart from the last day started at 3pm (start shooting at 3pm, call times between 1 and 2pm) and was scheduled to finish at 10pm. We ended up finishing around 12am every night, which wasn't a good idea as I had Kieran and my younger sister also living in the flat who had to deal with a noisy and messy crew outside their bedrooms. It was stressful for me, as producer, to make sure both the film benefited from the time we had while making sure my home wasn't being ripped to shreds from C-stands and inconsiderate strangers. Face it, if it's not my home, then who cares is the approach everyone seems to stand by in situations like this.

Dealing with actors and their big egos was a big lesson I've learned from this production. We had an actor who was constantly disobeying the directions of the director, and it was difficult to see him stalling the director's vision especially when we had to stick to a tight schedule. The problem with student small budget short films such as Grey Zone was the known fact that we are amateur film-makers, and experienced actors will pick up on this. Some, like in our case, will actually exploit this and that is not what you want on your production, no matter what level of experience the crew have.

Another issue I found was the lack of assistants I'd organised prior to the shoot. This was a stupid, stupid mistake and probably would have helped in situations like my ill and missing production designer and having someone help clean up at the end of every day, instead of doing it myself. We didn't have an assistant production designer, 2nd assistant director or runner, so a lot of times I found myself doing the running around and organising the food etc. It's a good lesson to learn that a small crew doesn't necessarily help with anything, as I was under the impression that such a small apartment begged for a small crew to occupy it.

As producer, I organise the crew to 'get organised'. To be honest, I didn't do this quite right. On the day before shooting, I'd said to everyone that I would be picking up the equipment from all hire centres. Problem was all hire centres were spread out across town and I had no access to a car or driver during that time. So I paid $180 from the budget to catch a taxi from the city to Manly, to Lindfield and back down to the city. It was not the best option, but it seemed like I had no other choice especially when I had to be at all hire places to sign documents and pay insurances. I realised that what I should have done was organised a courier which would have cost me less than half the price I paid for that taxi. I've also learned that sometimes you need to know the right people, and it was in the last day that Kieran's sister offered to organise a courier from her work for me. Amazing when you know the right people.

Otherwise, I think in the end I worked with a great crew (minus the mishaps along the way). My camera department was a Swedish team of great ideas, and they were always on the ball no matter how important the issue. If your first assistant director tells you to fuck off on set, then you've made the right choice about them being there. Otherwise I probably would have sacked my script supervisor (continuity) for his lack of anything on set, if I had the power to.

I'll keep you updated on how the editing process goes. Apparently we shot around 100 hours of footage over the 4 days, which is excessive but considerably normal for a digital film shoot.

In the mean time, I've been working on my thesis film which was just finally green-lit by the Head of School. I've also chosen my lead actor to play the role of Justin (whose name I am now deciding to change), which was exciting because I knew I wanted this guy to be my lead when I first met him. I'm going with the gut feeling, so I hope anything outside of that doesn't let me down.

More updates on my thesis soon.