Producer Jae Huff shares a breakdown of what a typical production day is like based on a filmmaking staple: the Call Sheet:
For those not in the film industry, a call sheet is a document that gives a lot of general and specific information for the day. If I was rich, I’d have my personal maid have one of these for me on the daily. Here it tells you what you are working on, what day you are at, and how many more you have to go. It details the weather (always important for filming), when you specifically need to be there and when generally everyone else will be there. Also when lunch is. We all want to know when lunch is, right? Lunch in film terms is the hot meal always provided by production at the 5 hour mark of shooting. Another post on that at another time. Doesn’t matter when it comes morning, noon, evening or midnight it is always called “Lunch” (like it was for us on Day 15 at 6:30 PM).
The next section prepares you for the day’s specifics. Location, address, scenes etc. First you can see whether you are shooting inside (INT) or outside (EXT). I would say inside is better but sometimes (like on this set) that warehouse gets HOT with all the lights and bodies. Lisa (our hair and makeup director) said it got up to 93º inside! The amount of pages is really important too. If you move fast you can do up to 8 pages a day, some days it’s half a page, but it really depends on the time and money you have to pay the people around you and hold locations.
People on this call sheet that were extra and got special notes were the people who drove vehicles that we needed that day. There was a van we were using in certain scenes and so that driver was sent a call sheet for that shot. Lastly, is the talent we used that day, some camera notes, and a preview of what we would be filming the next production day. Just to prepare yourself as well as thinking ahead to questions you might want to ask for that next day.
After the call sheet that was sent out, the director and I discussed shots that we need to retake and how we can get the coverage we need. The conversations go, if I could I’d re shoot [insert 5 scenes] BUT since we can’t we will need to push a marketing shoot we scheduled for the 6th into the 5th and give us time for essential things. This means, I need to reschedule actors, parents, flights, locations, cameras etc.
It's never a dull moment producing a feature film!
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