Like the documentary, even though the process isn't exactly over, I wanted to write about my experience and what I have learned throughout.
Hearing Andy's idea from the start was interesting: it wasn't something I completely understood at first but I think if you understand something the first time, it doesn't give you time for it to grow on you and develop into something much more. I was surprised but happy when Andy asked me to be his producer, he trusted me to help him carry his project from beginning to end which was quite a big responsibility but it helped my confidence massively because I had done a number of things that I hadn't done before, in quite this capacity. I organized meetings with the crew, I posted the advertisement online and communicated with a large amount of people about auditioning and in this, I set up auditions giving the actors the time and a place to turn up and audition for us. We had over twenty people email us altogether and had around eight people turn up for auditions, which anyone else would think was quite poor but when you get people telling you they will be at the audition, not many decide to show up, so eight was a large number for us and Andy and I were very impressed with everyone that came.
Andy is a very creative guy so when he came to me with his pitch idea (which I have written about before), I was over the moon because it was so fantastic. Again, like my documentary, we were going for a pitch that would stand out and would be memorable, and we achieved that. Everyone knows "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" and I feel because we did a pitch that was out there, that gave our tutor the confidence that we would pull off this film off. If we were able to make the pitch fun, our idea for the film would blossom just as the pitch did too.
Our shooting days went well in my opinion. The first day we did run out of battery which wasn't the best thing to happen and we didn't end up shooting as much as we wanted that day. It was my responsibility to make sure we had at least two batteries and I didn't deliver on the first day but before we went to shoot on the second day, I went to our college technician to pick up another battery to be on the safe side, and while we missed out on a few shots towards the end of the day, another battery would have been good, but we thought two batteries would have been good enough. The shots we did get on the first day however, were great thanks to our camera man who specializes in getting beautiful shots. All the actors got on great, and cast and crew got on well too. There was a lot of standing about on the second day for a few of the actors so I made sure I was with them for the majority of the time (when I wasn't doing sound) just to be there and make sure they weren't on their own, but there was always someone talking to someone, so the waiting around didn't seem like too long.
This was my first true experience of being a producer and taking control on certain aspects, it was scary and out of my comfort zone but looking back, I'm glad I done it because it's given me the confidence to do more things like this. When Andy and Conor tried to get the contact information for the man that owned the house that we wanted to shoot in, I finally got through the man's wife the next day and I tried to explain to her what we wanted to do. This meant explaining the situation a number of times, she didn't seem suspicious of us but I would have felt a little strange if I got a random phone call out of the blue from students wanting to film in my other property too. She gave us her husband's mobile number and I explained who we were, where we were from, what we were doing and what we wanted to do and he was completely fine with it. He came up to see us filming along with his wife and they were totally at ease with the situation because they could see we were doing no harm and I made sure to let them know that we wouldn't be there too long and we would clean up and obviously be respectful of the property. I'm usually the person standing behind the person giving other people information, just there as a backup so to be the person asking to use this place and reassuring this couple, was a big step for me.
Being producer, sometimes you do have to balance on a fine line and some may think I have crossed this line when communication with the camera man had almost been cut completely. We couldn't get through to him, no number of Facebook messages, text messages or phone calls we made to him where going to get him into class. I had asked for a shot list weeks before we shot, and still on this very day, I do not have one. I understand that everyone works differently and sometimes people don't use them, but when you're on someone else's production and you are asked to make a shot list and give it to the producer even just for the production folder, I don't think it's too much to ask and should been done because it will help both the director and producer, in this case. I have had to send a few messages over Facebook to the camera man to get him to send me this list but it still hasn't appeared. It may not seem like a big deal but I asked him to do a job and not a particularly large one at that, it still wasn't done. The same can be said for the edit and when I sent another message about the edit, we were told by the camera man that he wasn't editing and why did the director think this, even though Andy has proof that he would do a rough cut for him. There was a brief deadline for the rough cut last week and Conor did not deliver, or even come in to explain. I understand completely that he has his own film to do; if I didn't understand, I would have to be very unreasonable, and I'm not. But to completely not reply to us both, then tell us when the director isn't in the country that he didn't know he was doing that, I personally think is unreasonable. I would rather that he had told us that he couldn't do it because he had too much on his plate or he didn't want to, rather than leave us in the lurch and only give us information when we had to badger him for it. It is my job to get information out of both my cast and crew and I don't think Andy or I were unreasonable, but we have both learnt a valuable reason from this experience.
Overall, like my documentary, this has also been an exciting but stressful experience but I am quite happy with how this production went, despite the problems. We had the majority of our actors nailed down quite early and we only had to get one person last minute but she turned out great. We had been organized from the start with sending out the advertisements online, sending scripts out, setting up casting calls and talking with the actors throughout the pre and actual filming process. The footage that Conor shot was fantastic, and that's why Andy chose him because he is so good at cinematography and bringing the right tone and visuals on screen. Andy knew what he wanted from the start and sometimes things just happen; most of the time you yourself can't control them and that's how the film and television industry works, so I don't believe that the things went wrong could have been controlled 100% but I'm very happy with how Andy held the production together. He didn't lose his cool, he has kept a calm and cool mind throughout even if he did feel frustrated at times, it is a real testament to how he works and I would happily work with him again.
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