Stripping down your schedule
Two main factors determine the order in which you shoot your scenes: characters and locations. Start organizing your production strips by grouping the
characters that appear in the same scenes together. Then arrange the strips
with the same locations as close together as possible.
Actors
Try to schedule your actors so that they work as many consecutive days as
possible. Otherwise, you have to drop and then pick up the actors again. In
some union agreements, you still have to pay actors who are on hold for days
they don’t work. With non-union agreements, you don’t have to worry about
this. However, if a union actor is on hold, he or she has to be available at a
moment’s notice should your schedule change. If you’re doing a union production with union actors, special weekly rates will save some money in the
budget if you’re working an actor more than two or three days at a time.
After you have your production strips in place, you can generate a day-out-ofdays chart that shows when your actors work during the shooting schedule.
You can do this by hand or generate it from the software program you use to
produce your production board and strips.
Locations
Grouping the same rooms, buildings, and locations together helps the schedule. Picking up and moving your cast and crew from one location to the next
takes time and money. Most films are shot out of continuity for this reason.
Schedule outdoor scenes first. That way, if it rains or the weather isn’t appropriate for your shot, you can move indoors and use the time to shoot interior
scenes under safe cover. If you start shooting indoors and then go outside,
you aren’t giving yourself a security blanket for a cover-set (backup location).
By having a backup interior location when it rains on a day you’ve scheduled
a sunny outdoor scene, you can go into the indoor location without shutting
down production, and then go outside again when the weather has cleared up.ing cameos
If you’re creative, you may be able to slip a recognized actor into your film and not have to pay
a $20 million salary. If you hire an actor for one
day, or even a couple of hours, you can shoot
several scenes and insert them throughout the
film. I had Dan Aykroyd do the voice of Dexter the
computer in my film The Random Factor. I spent
a little over an hour with him and was able to
use about 15 minutes of his voice-over throughout the film. James Earl Jones played a judge in
two scenes for my film Undercover Angel. I shot
with him for a whole day so I only had to pay
him a one-day salary. George Carlin performed
a cameo in my American Film Institute student
film many years ago. I had the camera set up
and ready to go. He came in, did his scene, and
we wrapped in less than 45 minutes.
The best way to approach actors is through
referrals, or meeting them happenchance in a
store or restaurant. (I found Yasmine Bleeth’s
purse after she left it in a restaurant, and then
I asked her to star in my movie Undercover
Angel, and she did!) You can also write a letter
to an actor’s agent or manager to see if you can
convince him or her to be in your film.
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