Where will it all stop - Pre-production Meeting #3

This summary post was originally written for a practical exercise undertaken in the Planning and Making a Film module I undertook in the penultimate year of my BA (Hons). The module's practice was undertaken between October 2011 to June 2012 and it provided me with a hugely enriching experience. For a more detailed overview of the module and the projects I undertook as a part of it, see Planning and Making a Film: The student filmmaking experience.

14/11/2011

For this meeting everyone was present! From our group there was: Myself, Jenny, Emily and Sally and from the other: Tom, Sanne, Danny and Flo.

This meeting was chaired by Richard (our technical demonstrator) and the agenda was:

1) Locations

2) Cast

3) Script changes

4) Props and Costumes

5) Equipment

Richard wanted to check that we had sorted our locations and the release forms signed for them. My group had the release signed for The Royal Oak and the other group said that they were still waiting for a signature on one of their houses, but otherwise were good to go.

As I have already detailed we had cast all the roles, but Jenny was having issues with getting in contact with Suzanne, who we had cast as Lolly. Jenny said that she had emailed Suzanne three times and had not received a reply. Therefore, all agreed that we needed to sort out a plan B, which was facilitated by Tom who said he knew an actress who would be willing to take the role.

In terms of script changes both our group and the other had written a different ending, which we would shoot in our own productions units. We had also tweaked some lines in the first half of the script to make the fact that Chuck was now played by a younger actor fit with the rest of the story. However, Richard said that we still needed to get line scripts produced and distributed to the cast, ideally by Wednesday.

With props we were largely covered but with a few problems, such as the other group were having trouble getting their hands on a hob kettle and my group needed to check if the tankard we have been promised is a silver one; If it is glass then we will have all kinds of problem with continuity! With the hob kettle the other group said that they would keep asking around and if the worst came to the worst they would buy one. With the tankard we just need to check with the landlord of The Royal Oak that he has a ‘silver’ tankard; if not Flo said that she could get her hands on one.

Richard informed us that we would also be sharing our equipment, so the other group would get it out, use it and then hand it over to us. Our group and the other agreed that for this first shoot we would keep things simple and just use basic equipment. Therefore, Richard has booked us out: a Sony Z1 camera kit, a K6/ME66 Boom Microphone kit, a Manfrotto 504 Tripod and a Boompole.

Next: Where will it all stop – Rehearsals