How to Begin Production Phase of Movie

Video Transcript

"Welcome back. I'm Scott DuPont, award winning producer. Film Producing 102 is the name of this, and we're on Expert Village. This little segment is all about the production phase. This is the time when you start rolling the cameras for the 15, 20 days, 30 days, however number of weeks until you stop rolling the cameras, and how to keep your sanity, how to keep everything together during that production phase. It can get very taxing. You'll often run 12, it's not uncommon for films to shoot 13, 14 hours a day. If you have all of that equipment, all those people together, you're burning so much money each day, you want to shoot as much as you can in each day. The main words of wisdom I was going to impart here is have a strict budget, have a game plan. If you've done a lot of preproduction, and you're very well organized, try to stick to your plan. I see a lot of people that get carried away, both producer, especially directors, they get so caught up in the minute and they want the absolute shot to be perfect, they'll do take after take after take. I was on an HBO film that shot last week, the director was doing 37 takes on some of the setups. To me, that just seems a bit excessive. So if you have a master shot and you have your other shots, do one or two takes. If you're overall happy with it you'll have other stuff to cut to. Don't kill yourself trying, striving for perfection. If you think you know what you got, you have a couple other options, just make the movie, keep organized, keep focused, keep on plan, and you will succeed. Good luck. We'll be right back on Expert Village. We're just wrapping up here with a few more exciting segments on Film Producing 102."