What i would do differently

John Henry Richardson with Dylan Summerall. John Henry was the actor who mentioned the 5-minute per person rule of thumb.

I don’t dwell on mistakes, but I do think it’s helpful to grow as a filmmaker to look back and ask, what would I do differently next time?

It’s easy for the project to get derailed if even one critical piece isn’t in place. That said, you also need to conserve your resources, so it can be challenging to figure out what is necessary, and what isn’t.

For pre-production, I got started casting all the roles (about 30 in total) in November 2023. That was definitely the right call as there was plenty of lead time to our March 16th first day of production. SAG takes a lot of time to get setup, finding the right actors takes time, and you want to be able to have some rehearsals and costume fittings ahead of shooting.

But one thing I would do differently is try to get a producer/production coordinator on board the film a bit sooner. As we got closer and closer to production, there were too many tasks to get completed, that weren’t related to directing, and unfortunately I had difficulty getting a production coordinator onboard until we were only a few weeks out.

The other role that I would add to the crew next time is a first AD. My assumption going into filming was that I would act as the first AD, making sure our shoot was running on time. But we had a large cast and crew. Lots of people adds a lot of stress and difficulty to you as the director. And a good first AD would probably pay for themselves if they put together a stellar Stripboard. The Stripboard is an essential tool for scheduling actors, and I did it myself using Studio Binder. But I probably spent over a hundred hours working on it and I knew it was far from efficient. Efficiency means you save money, so having someone save time and money on set is one crew role that actually might pay for itself.

I think one more role I would hire for the crew would be a script supervisor. The big need here is to make sure nothing important is forgotten. I paid a lot of attention to making sure nothing important was missed, but it still becomes enormously difficult, particularly when you’re behind schedule, to remember everything you need.

Many times I would ditch my storyboards, and simply figure out on the spot what shots I wanted. But each setup takes time, and it’s easy to forget a pickup or insert shot that you need. Hence the script sup might be another crew member I add for the next feature.

Now, that all said, one of the supporting actors on my film had a great point about your number of cast and crew: every additional person you add to the setup slows your ability to get a shot off by 5 minutes. And generally speaking I think that is very accurate. So the larger the cast and crew, the slower you go, the slower you go the more money you’re spending.

It’s a fine line figuring out how many people to have on set. And one note I would give to the producer ahead of filming and to remind everyone at the beginning of each day, is that if you aren’t essential to being on set, you shouldn’t be there. We had several days with a lot of people and I had to get people to stop talking and hanging out and instead focus on doing the work. Even with a good AD, people won’t act as professionally as you’d like sometimes, so a warning both at the beginning of a large person shoot day, as well as when things spiral out of control would be helpful for keeping a tight set.

The last thing I’ll reflect on now is how you figure out what you need to shoot for the day and how you as the filmmaker organize your day. I tried a lot of different things to help keep focused on what I had to film, but it was difficult because this particular script had a ton of mini scenes, so there were a ton of scene numbers (which makes it easy to get confused). What I found worked well for me was to write on a blank sheet of paper at the beginning of the day which scene numbers I would be filming — in order of filming — and to write next to the scene numbers a brief description of the scene so I knew what I was looking at. The Stripboard is supposed to do this, but it only gives the first sentence of the scene for reference which I found unhelpful.

Next, I would pull out the script pages for each of the scenes I was going to film, and the storyboards I was going to film that day, and put all of that at the front of the binder I keep. That way I could easily reference what scene I was filming, the script pages, and if necessary the ideas I had had for the storyboards. I would also then read through each scene and write down what props I needed (we did have a prop master on set with us). This way I was well organized for the day. You have to keep in mind that some of my shoot days had upwards of 30 ‘scenes’ (really just moments, but again, difficult to keep track of a large number of scenes like that).

I think that was a great system for me. I’m sure there’s a better system out there, and the script supervisor should help you stay organized as well. Staying organized, remembering what you intend to film and what you need to film for the day is critical. This was one of the most important processes that I tackled, and I would encourage you to think a lot on this.