Right now, I am highly stressed. We are in pre-production on our seventh narrative feature film, After the Act, which is about a couple dealing with the fallout from infidelity over the course of a single day and night.
You would think having done this so many times before, organizing a feature film would be easy by now. Well, though experience definitely helps, it never gets easy. There are one thousand things to do, one thousand and one thoughts simultaneously running through my head.
These last couple of weeks I have typically been starting days at 7am and not stopping work until 11pm. The days have consisted of holding auditions, looking for crew, messaging potential locations, planning travel for myself and the cast, organizing and planning rehearsals, doing shot lists, refining the schedule, writing up contracts, reviewing props and costumes, and organizing and renting gear among other things.
At the same time, I am on a deadline for a feature film edit for a client, plus we have the Cats of Malta streaming release coming up at the end of September and are dealing with interview requests and planning advertising and PR, plus there are a couple of our other projects in various states of post production.
The workload is intense. The stress levels are high. But how do we manage it? Here are a few tips:
Plan First & Be Prepared for the Most Common Questions
We have seen some filmmakers put out general calls on social media like “Who Wants to Make a Feature Film!” with the idea being to gather an enthusiastic team and then try to work out dates and roles as a collective.
Photo by nikko macaspac on Unsplash
I suspect this rarely works. Instead, be specific about the roles you need filled and only advertise for those.
Further, anyone you approach to be part of your project is going to have questions and the first are usually about dates and money. So know your budget and what you can offer to each team member. You work this out by knowing your schedule and how many days each person will be required. If you truly have no budget at all, be upfront about this when putting out any cast and crew calls or initiating communication. Don’t waste people’s time.
Knowing your filming dates is also vital. For small short films, we may approach the cast or crew we want to work with with only a general idea about when we want to film, and then work out suitable dates depending on everyone’s schedule. But features are bigger, typically take more time and involve more people. So you need to have your dates already set or scheduling is going to become very difficult: there will always be somebody on your team who cannot do this day or that.
Setting dates also typically prevents (though not always) people who can’t work your schedule applying for any open positions. And it gives you a deadline to work towards in pre-production, a great motivator for most people, including myself.
Of course, you can be flexible with your schedule and change days and times around if you need to. It happens often in planning for a feature. But knowing your ideal dates and working towards these is an important first step in planning.
Make A List and Prioritise
I keep lists and have done so for a long time. I used to fill up small notepads with daily to do lists; these days I use my phone and an app called To Do. Not only that, at the start of pre-production, I will sit down with Google Sheets and create a Pre-Production Checklist. I will try to think about all the things we need to organize and add them to the Checklist, under three categories called ‘General’, ‘Logistics’, and ‘Equipment’.
Logistics is everything to do with organising locations and accommodation and travel. Equipment is everything related to camera, lighting, grip and sound gear we might need. And General is everything else, the creative stuff like casting roles, rehearsal outlines, shot lists, poster planning, etc. or housekeeping tasks like contracts and catering.
More stuff will be added to this Checklist as pre-production moves forward and I think of more things needed. But the list will also shrink as I cross tasks off that are completed such as casting. Such a Checklist allows me to have a birds eye view of the whole pre-production picture and see what needs to be done. This also allows me to prioritize tasks by importance. For example, casting the lead actors will take priority over booking extras.
The To Do app will then be populated with daily tasks from the Checklist. Today I need to advertise for a photographer for the poster shoot. Or today I need to review the potential sunset locations the DOP emailed through.
Having everything down on a spreadsheet or in an app or even on paper is so important to stay organised, on track, and to help alleviate stress. There are simply too many tasks to keep in your head and you are guaranteed to forget something unless you write it down.
Have Good Help
I am lucky in that I have a filmmaking (and life) partner that helps produce and often co-directs with me. Making creative decisions with Sarah, splitting the workload and tackling problems together is a tremendous help and mitigation for stress.
Co-directors on the set of Roniti
But I know not everyone has a long-term collaborator on their filmmaking journey. That doesn’t mean you can’t recruit good help with each project. After the Act is being filmed in Berlin but we are currently living in Croatia. Yet we have a friend and Berlin filmmaker, Laura Lukitsch, acting as an Associate Producer and helping to organize things in Berlin, such as locations and crew and extras, as she has contacts there that we do not.
We have worked with Laura previously, we know she is organised and professional, but she is also humble and has a genuine personality that is easy to get along with. So she was the first person we approached when we knew we would be filming in Berlin.
This is a big thing. Try to assess people’s personalities when recruiting cast and crew. Make sure you align. Somebody may have all the talent in the world, but if they are difficult to work with, your stress levels are going to skyrocket. The last thing you want on your set is out of control egos. Been there, dealt with that. And even if it doesn’t destroy a production, it always makes things so much more difficult.
One actor who applied for a minor role for After the Act, and also auditioned for our last feature Forefans, did nothing more in his applications than list big Hollywood stars he has worked with. To me, this signifies he’s in the industry mainly to stroke his own ego. And this is the type of personality I try to avoid.
Be selective when looking for help and building your team. Interview people. Try to judge how they work, why they want to be part of the project, and if you will get along. Only select people who tick all the right boxes for you. Check references by seeing who they have worked with and ask around. If somebody is difficult to work with, word spreads quickly in local industries.
Accept Things Will Be Last Minute
This is hard for me as I have the type of personality where I like everything to be in order and problems to be solved instantly. Often, if things go wrong, I will jump on the phone trying to force an immediate solution. I remember when I had a disagreement with an actor on another production over money (it was an unpaid short film, on the day of filming he suddenly decided he wanted to be paid), I was on the phone and had him replaced with a new actor within an hour.
Patience is not my greatest strength. Waiting for responses to messages about using locations, or inquiring if this particular piece of equipment is available, stresses me out. I like to tick boxes off my checklist and feel the production moving forward.
But some things, and some decisions, need time. Accept that you simply need to plough ahead, doing all you can to sort out issues, but also trusting things will fall into place or an alternative solution will present itself.
For example, with Cats of Malta, we desperately wanted to interview Roza who built a public ‘Cat Village’ for stray cats in St Julians, which had become so iconic that it attracted all sorts of tourists. But Roza had a fractured leg, there were Covid restrictions, and the Cat Village was due to be destroyed by developers any day.
We didn’t know if we could get the interview in time before the destruction, so we filmed Sarah talking about the Cat Village on location as a back-up. It was an alternative solution. Not great, but something. Luckily, Roza did manage to recover in time to do the interview before the village was destroyed. We got both the interview and the aftermath of the destruction on camera and it turned out to be one of the more powerful interviews in the film, only coming together at the last minute.
Give Yourself Options
One of the locations we were looking for in After the Act is a bar or theatre space where we can film a dance club scene.
But when searching for this location, I wouldn’t just contact one space and wait for their response about availability and budget and if they are even open to filming. No, I would contact several at once and even had Laura on the ground in Berlin looking at spaces.
If one location said no, I still had other locations I am waiting to hear back from. If somebody said yes, I could weigh up the look, logistics of filming there, the cost, and ultimately make a decision on what is best for the film and the budget.
Similarly, when casting a minor role, I’d approach an actor who I saw on Facebook with a good look and tell him about the project. But at the same time I’d have a casting call running and will receive emails from interested applicants.
It’s all about having options. Seeing what you uncover. And it is also about having a safety net. Back-up plans. It may mean you have more decisions to make but it also lessens stress as not all your hopes are relying on a single “yes” or “no”.
Switch Off
With so many things to do and your mind spinning with thoughts and problems and ideas, it can be hard to step away and switch off for a while. But it is essential for your own health and sanity that you force yourself not to become completely consumed by pre-production.
Now, I admit, sometimes I fail to follow my own advice here. And sometimes I turn on my computer and get on my emails first thing in the morning and do nothing but work and eat for the whole day until I collapse into bed.
But when I catch myself doing this I try to remind myself switching off not only lets your mind rest and recharge, but in this period of inactivity, your subconscious sometimes takes over and you come up with new ideas for the film or solutions to problems that have eluded you.
For example, with After the Act, we were planning a poster shoot but struggling to find a talented photographer within our budget. Yet as I took a break to go for a walk with Sarah, another idea for the poster popped into my head. The poster could be a still from a shot we already had planned. Both Sarah and I smiled. We agreed this new idea will end up looking better than the staged poster shoot we were initially planning and struggling to organise. Photographer no longer required, money saved, problem solved, all because we switched off and took a walk.
So I try to start each day with meditation. Reflecting about the things I am grateful for. I try to get to the gym so I can run and lift weights and just focus on my body, instead of the million thoughts in my head. I go for walks. At the end of the night, I try to unwind with a book or a show or a video game. Like I said, I am not successful at switching off every day. But when I am, my mind, and my stress levels rejoice.
Conclusion
So don’t forget to take care of yourself while you produce your next film and chase your next dream. Be conscious of your stress levels. Do all you can to stay calm and reduce the pressure you put on yourself. In the end, you will produce better films, and you will enjoy the pre-production process so much more.
Written by Ivan Malekin