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3 Points on Scheduling
Before all else it is important to schedule your life. It's the path to be a great saint.
1. Production Scheduling
Obviously, the longer your script is the hairier the scheduling is going to be. And the more complicated the scheduling gets, decision by decision, time blocks for a scene start to get compromised and before you know it the production is guaranteed to be behind schedule. Honestly, one good thing we can learn from Unions is their realistic approach to the work day.
For the Catholic Independent Filmmaker, taking care of your workers is very important of course for their health, and more so practicing the virtue of charity releases God's Grace onto your apostolic work.
DO the Math
There are many variables involved therefore, let's get on Mr. Roger's Trolley and go to the world of make believe. Let's pretend were making a short film with a 20 page script.
Now let's work backward from the finished film.
If 1 page = 1 minute of finished film, you'll have a 20 minute film.
You'll probably have 20 edit cuts per minute.
Those 20 edit cuts are from 7-10 different camera set ups. Let go with 10 for easy math.
If we have 10 set ups per page X 20 page script, we need to schedule time for 200 camera setups.
Now you really want to get the shot right so let's say we average 6 takes per setup. AND each take averages 5 minutes.
200 setups X 6 takes x 5 min = 6000 min/ shooting = 100 hrs. of actual filming.
The easiest way to save time without compromising quality is to get the take count down. (It's very tempting to combine shots and it can work, but that's a compromise so I'm not going to talk about that option)
I've noticed the Camera dept. is not the biggest reason for retakes.
Retakes are usually for the actors. The only way to get actor retakes down, is to help them be ready for the scene.
The second reason I notice for a high retake count is the Director. If a Director's expectation is higher than their cast's ability, trying to solve the imbalance on set is a killer. The Take Count can be apocalyptic.
THE END IN MIND
The main thing everyone sees on the screen is the actor. Therefore schedule plenty of time for the Director to work with the actors in Pre-Production.
And when scheduling the shoot days don't lose site of the critical scenes that are really important for the actors to nail.
Schedule those a little bit later in the production.
That allows every department to get in a groove and know each other. And if you have Charity in mind while scheduling your team will not be exhausted on these important shoot days.
And yes actor are supposed to do their homework and they need to know their beginning middle and end and all their motivations and they should just be able to jump jump jump to any shot, but here's a secret, The actor can tell by the scheduling if the production team is keeping them in mind. A good actor is not going to complain. I'm not suggesting you placate to babies, I'm saying an actor performs their BEST when they sense they are being taken care of. You can help create that in your scheduling simply by keeping their work process in mind. I'm certain you could save, at least, 1 take per setup.
Again the math.
Keeping the actor in mind, while scheduling, can lead to saving 17 hours of camera run time which will have a trickle down effect that can save even more random chunks of time.
To do this get the director and actors together in Pre-production remembering all the time it will save in Production.
Just think how much time you'd save on a Feature . . .
2. The TIME MULTIPLIER
One time worth its weight in gold is lunch and dinner time. A good meal and a moment to unwind can do wonders for the crew. A happy team is not hangry.
To really increase the productivity of your schedule allow me to suggest adding prayer time on your set. How do you approach it now?
Are you giving Christ his time so he will multiply yours?
I purposely add 3 nonnegotiable prayer times on the schedule: beginning with mass in the morning, noon angelus, and night prayer.
We stop whatever we're doing and recommit Christ as our reason. Yeah it causes those gears to come to a screeching halt so to speak and people are like, 'oh my gosh why? we had such great momentum.' Well yeah, there was, but we can't forget where that came from. It comes from him. It comes from the Lord and we got to give it back to him. And it's got to be a sacrifice. If it's not really a sacrifice then it's just lip service. When you make put him precedent he makes things flow, It may seem a little counterintuitive from a management perspective, BUT THIS IS THE PARADIGM SHIFT. IT'S A NEW WINE SKIN APPROACH. I'm saying you put prayer in there. You put it in there and watch God work. He will like multiply your time. I've seen it tons of times. You will get everything you need done. I've seen it work it happens every time every time, BUT you have to trust in it. It requires a trust. It's going against your grain to put the prayer in there but if you schedule it in there and you do it, you will see the fruits. And that fruit is going to show up on your screen. It's going to be in the final product. It's going to make it that much better because it's going to help transmit the blessing to your audience. And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to bless the audience through our art.
3. CONTRACT DELIVERABLES
This third one is usually in postproduction. How do you keep contract work deliverable on time? Maybe you're just throwing tons of money at them and sure that's going to help keep them on schedule and keep your post production on schedule, but you may not have that $$$ luxury. So you have to give them time. You have to give them YOUR TIME. There's a saying the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I want to propose something even better than that. When you see these people are with you on the journey we become a little more compassionate and not so much frustrated. It takes YOUR TIME. They don't want to work against you. They want to work with you. They want you to be a happy client. AND as hard as it is for you to accurately estimate your schedule, their estimations are no different (off). When you give them your time you befriend them and and friends do things for each other. They see you're not a tyrant and building friendships with everybody shows them the love of Christ. And sure maybe someone's going to take advantage of you. But do it for the love of Christ. Because of your vulnerability, you will find out who they truly are. Then you can decide if you're going to use them in the future. And there's people you're not going to use again who take advantage of your kindness. God didn't call you to be a doormat. He called you to lay down your life for your friends his friends Lay it down for him but that doesn't mean you're a doormat. You don't take abuse over and over again. Like the old saying ,"first time shame on you second time shame on me".
The Contractor Pickle
I talk with one of my music guys about this all the time. Music's always last and there's always a rush at the end so he always feels that strain to get the music done in a shorter time like he thought. For example: He thought he'd have a month to do music and now it's two weeks. People can only produce quality when they have enough time to do it.
It's good to have deadlines and scheduling and at the same time we have to be willing to to recognize that we can't give the left overs to titles and credits and music expecting quality without the necessary time. "We spent too much time on effects and we spent too much time in ADR and so we need music to pay the penalty." No no no no. You're going to reap the benefits when you give your music guy, and others the time they need. Start well in pre-production and you will finish well in post.
Going back to scheduling in the prayer. You know it also gives you Clarity of mind to know when your spending too much time in another department.
Maximillian Kolbe he's Patron of film guys I think. He was big on time because he knew time was something you cannot get back.
And what are we doing? We're trying to become Saints! Be a great Saint!
Spend your time well. That's where you become a great Saint because it's virtuous. It's virtuous to be prudent with your time. It's virtuous to be charitable with your time, especially back to God.
Here's something cool. When you use your time well you become more attentive to the voice of God and whatever messenger he sends you guide you.
Think about how that helped St Joe. St. Joe is asleep. The guy is listening to the Lord in his sleep and the angel comes to him and says rise take the child and his mother and get out of town because Herod's coming, He's upset get out of here. St. Joe wastes no time. He gets right up and he gets right to work doing exactly what he's supposed to do and the Lord blesses Him. He blesses him by protecting the holy family and he he keeps them safe from the snares of the evil one or his enemies so those people who out there who are nefarious.
Okay they've got whatever their issues are. They're not happy and they want to make other people's lives miserable. But the Lord will protect you he will guide you but we have to listen and we have to be quick to act. We have to be quick to act and respond and sometimes it may not make sense. I'm sure it didn't make a ton of sense to St. Joe. "We got this new baby and you want me to what? you want me to travel to Egypt? really? you know how dangerous it is to go to Egypt? We're going to run into all kinds of shenanigans. Maybe I should just take my chances here and try to hide from Herod." NO St Joe didn't question it. He had that conviction it was from God and he went for it. That's the kind of docility we need. And that's the kind of filmmaker that is going to defeat Hollywood.
That's how you bring down the Goliath. Train your heart to be humble and contrite like King David and that's going to win the day.
Remember it's more important to live like you're in heaven than to make another film.
I can't do this topic justice in a blog. To go deeper we need to connect and come together for the glory of God.
Pray that people will have generous hearts and fund this renaissance.
Unite with other Catholic Filmmakers like you.
