Plan the Shoot: Part 1 of Production Planning (page 2)

Even the biggest Hollywood productions are planned and developed by successive approximation: the script describes the requirements; the planners come as close as possible to meeting them; then the script is adjusted to eliminate the resources that were unobtainable and maximize those that were.

This is always true with casting actors. Suppose, for instance, the script demands a beautiful, enticing, evil stepmother; but the closest actress you can find is a frumpy, heavyset person who would look silly vamping around on screen. Happens all the time. So you do some fast script revisions to create a frumpy, heavyset evil stepmother. By planning to fit the circumstances, you save both the actress and the show from embarrassment.

Or take locations. If you can't find anyplace resembling the dungeon where the evil stepmother imprisons the heroine, you have three choices: remove the dungeon part, create it as a CG virtual set (if you have the resources), or just chain the lady up in a storeroom or something.

Again, if you plan these adjustments before production begins, you can still shoot the plan; but if you haven't invested in the planning, you're going to arrive at an unconvincing "dungeon" location and have to improvise a fix on the spot. That seldom works very well.

In reality, budgeting and scheduling are two halves of a circle. Scheduling brings the right cast members, crew, and equipment to the right location at the right time, crucial if you're paying people by the hour or day and just as important if folks are donating their time.

With good planning, you can also save big bucks (that's where scheduling and budgeting play tag with each other). For instance, if that antique fire engine rents for $200 a day, you'll want to schedule all its scenes back-to-back so you can return it as soon as possible.

Oh, and how is it going to get to your location? I once rented an antique vehicle without knowing it didn't really run. At the last minute, I had to put out expensive, unbudgeted bucks for a day's use of a platform-bed tow truck.

This is also true for anything else that's time-sensitive. With meticulous planning, you'll always have the correct cast list at the proper place with the required equipment and props, all ready to shoot. Without planning, everyone ends up standing around, and that's not good.

And if it rains or something else goes wrong? A planning pro will have a contingency plan: a way to shoot something else until you can resume the original schedule.

Professional production accountants must keep tiny altars to the Spirit of Murphy, on which they burn symbolic dollar bills, because on a shoot, anything that can possibly go wrong will go wrong. Corollary #1: everything that goes wrong costs money.

Everything. It goes without saying that good production planners budget the show line-item by line-item, right down to cold cream for the makeup department. Then they run an eagle eye over every aspect of production. Does one character throw a vase at another? How many takes might that require, and how many replacement vases? Does one sequence call for actual snow? What will the weather be like and how many days might be lost while waiting for the fluffy stuff to start falling?

Obviously, every production is different. If you're taping the CEO's speech in her office, you're probably very safe. If you're covering whale migrations from the subjects' POV, good luck.

Since you don't have unlimited funds, you can't just say, "well, whatever it takes." You have to cast a cold planner's eye over every script page to spot every place that could run over budget. Then you add a contingency fee for protection.

Then you double it, and pray.

That's it for creating a production plan. Next time out, we'll see how that plan structures the actual shoot so that you can end up editing the show you started out to make.

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