Actors, crew, locations, friends and family - there are a lot of factors that you need to balance to make your production a success. My most vital piece of advice is don't give up.
There will be times where you will get frustrated - the larger your cast the more difficult it is going to be to organise. Organising all these elements can feel like herding cats. You need to be able to balance peoples' commitments with the commitment to the production.
While it would be nice to hope that everyone will make your project the first commitment for them, it's not a reasonable hope. Cast and crew are likely to be providing their skills and expertise on a volunteer basis, and they will only have so much time available for doing volunteer projects. They still need to eat, and get paid.
So the trick is to keep open about scheduling with everyone involved. Engage them in the process so that they feel that they are having a say. You will find that people are willing to make compromises if they feel that they are being listened to.
In most cases you will be able to make things work, but you need to be patient and be able to change plans.
In the case of Urban Numina, I had placed some very tight turn arounds on the cast and crew. I wanted to get into shooting as soon as possible. Locking down a location was proving to be difficult and to use the house I wanted to, I needed to be able to provide dates and times so that the occupants could plan around my timetable.
As such, I had a very tight set of dates available. This was further complicated by the fact that The 48 Hours Film Challenge was sitting right in the middle of May - which many of our team are involved in. Then I discovered one of the cast was involved in a theatrical production that had booked out all Sundays with rehearsals - which made my range of options even smaller.
I didn't want to shoot every weekend of the month, and with 48 hours I expected people to be exhausted for the next week and a bit.
To further complicate things, another actor had family commitments on the weekends I did have available!
So what was a producer to do? Give up? Never! Delay until June? I wanted to strike while the cast were still eager and positive about the production. The longer it takes until shooting, the more time for that good will to weaken.
The solution ended up being an easy one. I split the episodes up into six shorter pieces, (although in total they actually add about 6-10 minutes of extra film time to the original three) and split these around the times certain actors were free and when locations were available.
This succeeded in doing two things for me - firstly, I was now able to shoot a single episode in a day rather than needing 2-3. Secondly, it allowed me to shoot around other people's commitments and keep their on set time down to around 4 hours each in most instances.
Ultimately we can shoot the episodes and start releasing them at the end of May while still getting a 2-3 week break between episodes 2 and 3.
What happens if nobody is free at the same time? This is an unlikely situation, but it is possible. Some people do audition despite not actually having the time to do the project if they are successful. In the unlikely event of this occurring, it will depend on the people involved. You will likely need to get hard with some of the actors. Stick the the largest number of actors able to work at the same times and recast the rest if they cannot reschedule.
I don't think it is really that likely though, so you should be fine.
So remember, be flexible and patient. Sometimes it looks like you have no options, but if you take a deep breath - walk away from schedules for a day or two and then come back and look at them again, you will find a way around. And by being open to the cast and crew, I had some of them come back and offer suggestions of what days worked for them.
Keep honest, keep positive and keep determined. Scheduling will prove to be one of the biggest challenges you'll face - but it is also one that can be overcome.
Next - Making a call sheet.
Conan
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