Day One: Production Meeting

Hello World Wide Web,
having just returned from my first first day of pre-production, I can now officially state that we have a really great crew working on this film. While avid readers of this blog will likely recall that I may have said something to a similar effect in several of my previous posts, the truth is that I really hadn't met any of them in person before today. While they seemed nice in E-mail form, for all I knew they could actually all have been complete jerks. Today I can confirm, without a shadow of a doubt, that this is absolutely not the case. From the first second I stepped foot into the production office, it immediately became clear to me that our crew is not only a well oiled movie making machine, but also a great group of people. Despite having never actually encountered someone on a film that I didn't like, I'm always excited to learn that I'm going to have an easy time getting along with my fellow crew members.

Having said that, today's main event was a large crew meeting between all of the various department heads ensuring that everything was going to be ready for production when the camera starts rolling on saturday. Together, they meticulously went through the production schedule and made sure that every prop, costume, location, and camera angle was decided upon and accounted for. If there's going to be a shot of Mandy watching TV, what show is she going to be watching? If she is watching a show, will it actually be playing, or will it be added in later during post production? If it is going to be added during post production, will the television screen be overlaid with a green screen, or are you simply just going to place tracking marks on the screen? These are the kind of questions that are constantly being asked to ensure that even the most finite of details be ready, so that when the director yells action, everything is good to go . While no amount of preparation can make production run perfectly smoothly, if you can eliminate all of the potential problems that are able to control, than that's half the battle right there. This is especially true on a lower budget film like Fly Away, since every additional second you spend in production costs extra money.

Thats it for now,
Be sure to check back in tomorrow for more.
-Pete