Everything.

Photo from Jorn

When researching film roles I've found that most have very specific objectives they have to achieve in order to gain that title, with Producer however there doesn't seem to be a set answer other than - everything. You just oversee everything which in part makes you responsible for everything which is terrifying.  It's just absolutely terrifying when you leave something you've worked so hard on in the hands of other people, no matter how much you trust the other people, you can't help but worry.

That's what I'm experiencing right now just constant worry of things going wrong, seeing people not do their job right and using that as the way of stepping to regain control however I only have that control for the minute I'm talking to the person who isn't doing their job, after that it's right back to feeling, well feeling a bit useless. During the shoot if something seemed to be getting out of hand or going off track I would step in to bring everyone back but mostly everyone was doing their own thing - rather disjointedly for the most part. Yet because everyone was so wrapped up in the their job I took to making notes of things that simply weren't going to work tomorrow because we have a very intense work load. After we wrapped for the day I asked everyone to hang back for a few minutes whilst I gave them a few notes, the majority being around communication.

For a long time whilst producing this piece I didn't think I had to keep talking about the importance of communication because I thought it was common knowledge, however as time has gone on I've realised it really isn't. People and teams I thought were speaking to each other (and for the most time I was being told they were speaking together) just weren't communicating as much as I would have hoped. I thought that all changed 2 weeks ago when I all but demanded that all finalised paperwork/planning be sent to me and everything seemed to match up. But then things started changing, when we got on set we went from high-key to low-key lighting almost immediately meaning that other things then didn't fit so they had to change but because everyone was so hyped up they forgot to talk about it! It was just a bit confusing.

I'm not sure if it was confusing simply because they were using terminology that I still don't fully grasp or everyone was crowded around the camera talking at once but something was off. Not speaking properly to actors, people not fully engaging with their jobs, not listening to their team leader, letting others take over their role etc It's really hard to gauge how severe some of the actions are because this is the first time I've done this. I just hope that explaining my perspective on the shoot at the end of the day was enough to make people realise that tomorrow is going to be hard, doable but hard.