What Happens As A Producer During A Film Production?

Calm on the outside but a hot mess on the inside. I was extremely nervous the entire time and running on less than 3 hours of sleep. But let’s take it back to the night before the shoot – it’s 10pm and I still had props to create, test, and pack before the 5:30am call-time at the first location in Washington, DC. I’d set five alarms that night or shall I say “morning” when I finally made the decision to get some sleep past midnight. But the act of me trying to get any type of solid sleep just wasn’t working. I was afraid that I’d sleep through the alarms, so I kept waking up every half hour to make sure I was still on schedule.

 It was at 3:35am, a half hour past my desired wake time that I finally got the full energy to wake up and start getting ready for the long day that was ahead and I still had to pick up my Director of Photography (DP) before heading to the first location. But, no matter, my thought process was, “I’m finally here. Today is the day I either sink or swim and I’m going to SWIM”. All the sacrifice, meetings, planning, strategizing, budgeting, pitching, interviewing etc. to sell people on this idea that I’d cultivated for over five years had led up to this, so I refused to accept anything other than a successful shoot. I mean, my brother even traveled from New York to see this production through. (Let me just say, he doesn’t just travel anywhere for anyone)

Fast forward, it’s 5:35am. I pull into the parking lot of Politics & Prose (P&P) on Connecticut Avenue with my DP and it’s bloodshot cold. I was happy to see my Production Assistant (PA) (Sage Levy), the Director (Kat Vivaldi), and Lead Sound (Ben Weingartner) already there with a table full of breakfast and refreshments set up. I was so hungry, I immediately jumped out the car, ripped the plastic bag full of bagels and chugged one of them down while shivering like crazy.

My mind began racing again wondering if the P&P manager (Keith Vient) was going to keep his word to be there by 6am to let us in. We were on a 3-hour time crunch and two of the actors had other film gigs to go to later that day.

To lighten up the mood, my DP (Nico Romero) was trying to tell a few funny film-set stories but to be honest it just wasn’t working. Luckily, ten minutes later the location manager shows up. He lets us in, and it’s GO TIME! I began to perform special FX makeup on my wrists, get mic’d up for the scenes, perform mini rehearsals, and answer extra questions all at the same time as the rest of the film crew starts piling in. It’s complete chaos but somehow, I’m content.

Finally, camera and lighting are finished setting up to begin the first scene and we’re 45 minutes behind schedule but I’m ready to go on “action”. We eventually get through all the shots and scenes at the first location at 12pm (3 hours behind schedule). Luckily, one of the actors’ who had a second film gig that day got word that the production was postponed because we still couldn’t film his scenes at the first location like we initially planned. (Whew!). I felt so sorry for him because he was fighting to stay awake with coffee as he’d finished late on another film set the night before. But he was a veteran, so he was patient.

It’s time to wrap up and rush to the second location because the main actor for the second location had to be finished with his scenes by 3pm because he was also a part of the Bridgerton Experience in Washington, DC. As we’re packing, I get a gut-wrenching phone call from the owner of the air BNB that I’d rented saying that it wouldn’t be ready until 2pm. (2 PM! You can’t be serious!). My stomach is turning at this point because it’ll take us an hour to get there because of traffic. Calmly, I decide to give the PA the go-ahead to order lunch and let everyone know that we’ll be running behind schedule.

Now, it’s 1:45pm. I make it to the air BNB as the owner gives me a tour of the place to make sure everything is clean. Once the initial tour was complete, I let everyone in, and it’s GO TIME again. I instantly urge the actor who was fighting to keep his eyes open to go into the bedroom and sleep because he’ll be hanging around for a while.

We get through each scene smoothly while the main actor at the second location is negotiating with his stage manager that he’ll be running a little late for his call time at the Bridgerton experience and luckily, his stage manager was understanding. 6pm finally rolls around and it’s time to shoot the final scene in a back street of the air BNB complex with the final talent and boy was he well-rested. It’s even colder than before and I’m fighting to keep away tears from the exhaustion and harsh winds.

It wasn’t until 7:30pm when the director said the words, I’d been dreaming of for months, “AND THAT’S A WRAP”! 

Check out a mini BTS video of what it was like on set!

Another post you may be interested in:

• How To Begin Raising Money For Your Film?

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