No shoot is ever completed exactly as planned, but you can minimize the risks by following a few vital procedures.

First, always have Plan B ready. If weather might be a problem, identify indoor scenes with the same cast and have the locations, costumes, and props standing by. If performers are flaky about showing up, know where to find them and how to shoot around them in the meantime. The trick is to identify the vulnerable parts of your plan in advance and have alternatives ready to go.

Second, learn how to adjust plan A. Understand that a simple thing like a dirty shirt can ripple all the way to post production. Take the time and care to work out all the implications of proposed changes.

Next, know when to quit. Nothing is more frustrating than doing all the work of getting a day's shoot together and launched, then sending everyone home again. Your instinct is to say, okay, let's call Fred and Wilma and see if they can go over to the church and shoot their stuff today, and try to rent that '57 Chevy, oh, and phone the church sexton, and....

Uh-uh. This kind of desperate improvisation may keep your crew busy, but the results will be hasty and undercooked. You have to develop the good judgement to know when you're licked for now so that you can live to fight another day.

Finally, review your footage, preferably before you wrap at any one location, but at least at the end of every shooting day. In even the most professional production, you're going to find stuff that's inadequate, wrong, or just plain missing. Before matters go any further, make the notes you need to get pickup shots, to retake bad stuff, to re-think and re-stage sequences that plain don't work. Then plan the reshoot as meticulously as you planned the original. When post production starts, you'll bless yourself.

Speaking of which, tune in for next month's exciting conclusion: Edit the Shoot You Planned…