We had production assistants, a gaffer, a boom operator, production sound mixer, director of photography, Assistant Camera, and 1st Assistant Director. It would have been great to have more help. More production assistants, assistant directors, assistant cameras, grips, actor wranglers, script supervisor, and probably a whole slew of jobs we don’t even know about. However, we hustled and made it work. Anyways, this was a big crew to us…. and our pocketbooks.
Sometimes things were moving too slow.
Sometimes it was chaotic.
But we made it through.
Production days are so stressful… so incredulously stressful.
2 lessons I’m taking on for future productions… build time into the schedule to check the quality of the work… all the work regardless of how tight the schedule. Sounds like a no brainer but with a million things going it is nice to feel you can trust certain people with certain tasks. I’m not there yet. I don’t think I have the budgets necessary for that yet. I have listened to audio before and lots of bad audio got past my ears so I decided to not waste my time listening as long as I had a professional to monitor it for me… bottom line like my sister says…. “trust.. but verify”
Second lesson.. trust my instincts… if I have to spend one iota of time thinking about whether or not someone is actually working it’s because they are not actually working. I had planned not to ask someone back because I hadn’t seen them working… after talking to other crew members they all pledged I was mistaken. Next day…. same stuff. Money leaving my pocket for somebody’s non-work… infuriating.
Olusala Sisters 