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What does a film producer do?

At the start of the ‘It’s all about the ‘P’ project I googled what a producer does and jotted the main things down. At the end of the project, I evaluated my performance against the list.

Keeping those communications going

In my personal SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) I identified communications and how I measure success as personal strengths. I intended to use my next communication to the ‘ ‘Just about the P’, short film crowd funders as an example, but I haven’t written it yet. Below is an example of the communications I sent out, the first was for a major filming weekend and the second to thank our donors.

I believe the filming weekend email was a success because, everyone turned up on time knowing what was expected of them with the clothes changes they needed, the cast greeted me warmly, none of them queried the contents of the email and three members of the cast congratulated me for good organising skills. (admittedly, they may have been influenced by the refreshments and comfort facilities (an open fire and a toilet for the dedicated use of crew and cast). The success measure for my second communication below will be whether they crowd fund me for my next independent filming venture.

Communications 1

Dear Cast and Crew,

It has been a promising start to the project thus far. With two shoots completed, and a further two to go, we are hopeful this continues into our upcoming shoot this Sunday. As you may be aware from the attached schedule, all members of the cast will be present for the shoot this week, as we will be filming the finale of the film. We’re looking forward to meeting and working alongside you all.

Location

As you all know, we are filming on location in Portsmouth, in an area called Milton which sits along the south east of the city. Please see bellow the full address, as well as a Google Maps link of the location for personal reference. We also have access to a pub which resides next door to the newsagents we are filming in. This will be used as our base where you will have the opportunity eat and relax while you are not filming.

90 Locksway Road, Milton, Portsmouth, PO4 8JP. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/90+Locksway+Rd,+Portsmouth,+Southsea+PO4+8JP/@50.7949642,-1.0665447,14.1z/data=!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x48745c50ae0951b5:0x677f44d8d3171998!2s90+Locksway+Rd,+Portsmouth,+Southsea+PO4+8JP!3b1!8m2!3d50.7937388!4d-1.0524779!3m4!1s0x48745c50ae0951b5:0x677f44d8d3171998!8m2!3d50.7937388!4d-1.0524779

Schedule

Attached to this email, you will find an excel document which details who is needed on what days, and also provides a brief time schedule for the day.

Please pay special attention to this to assure you are present on the correct days. A typical shoot day will be between 1-8pm, please note not every actor will be needed on every day or for the full duration of the day.

Arrival

All cast members should arrive promptly at 11:30am. This is to provide the opportunity to debrief you all on the running of the day, run over lines, or air out any concerns or questions. This gives you all the chance meet each other before being called through to start filming which shall commence at 1pm

All crew should arrive from 10:30 for prep and debriefing.

Costume

I have made contact with each of you with regards to what should be worn this Sunday. Any issues don’t hesitate to contact me.

Thank you once again for being willing to participate in the film, any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me via email, text or phone

Best

Theo Chambers

Producer

07846046506

Communications 2

Dear All;

This is an email to pass on a huge thank you to everyone for their contribution to our graduate film project. Your donations have given us the opportunity to fund and work among some amazing actors, provided the team freedom to be creative with our locations, set and props and launched us well on our way to securing a good final grade. To that, we can’t thank you enough!

It’s a Wrap! We have now come the the end of our filming process with the completion of 5 days of filming over the last month. We had a fantastic time on set, and are walking away with some footage to be really proud of. We will have a final product to share with you all towards the end of April/early May. Until then our editing team will be working away, piecing the footage together in the upcoming weeks.

To stay connected, please check out our Facebook page where we post weekly about the project - https://www.facebook.com/ItsAllAboutTheP/

On behalf of the team and I, thank you once again for your backing and support on this project. We can’t to share it with you.

Warm Regards

Theo Chambers - Producer

Trystan Evans - Writer/Director

Liam Ambrose - Director of Photography/Camera Op

Dan O’Neill - Sound Operator/Sound Technician

Melique Ogilvie - Camera Op

P.S FYI, I have attached a selection of photos taken whilst on set. Enjoy!

Here is my personal SWOT analysis.

Tumblr isn't Microsoft word table friendly, so I uploaded it as an image.

We're pleased to present our first sneak peek at It's all about the P via the form of this teaser trailer!

Target Reached!!!!

The cards arrived within 2 working days and I am pleased with the result. The gloss finish makes for a very clean shiny finish. I went for a very minimal design because I personally find that less is more with regards to some things. This is the overall theme I went for in designing these cards. I look forward to distributing them out. They are something I am proud of.

On the downside, I think the spacing could be a little bit more even. The OCD in me ever so slightly cringes at this. However overall as a finished item, I am happy.

Choosing a Business Card Provider

Having decided on a basic design for my business card I evaluated online providers for the best fit. My search started with a review of best business card printing services for 2017 found on http://www.toptenreviews.com/business/services/best-business-card-printing-services/

I selected the services that best met my criteria, low cost, low volumes, high quality, double sided printing, photographs, plastic cards, own design tested the web sites for ease of use

I tried freelogoservices.com, pixelslogodesign.co.uk, logomatics.co.uk and Moo.com and eventually selected [the one you used], which costs £23.99 for 100 plastic backed cards. I settled on the for there free delivery and speedy dispatch time.

I wanted a business card that was memorable and not easily forgotten. I designed the logo to be based around my personal branding. I toyed with several ideas before going on line, as much as possible I wanted the logo to represent me.

After scrapping this Idea, I remembered I had my logo already designed and ready to use. I incorporated this into the design with a natural white background to avoid clashed with my logo.

This was a good shout anyway because I wasn't sold on the idea I was creating. I’m surprised I had forgotten my Logo! After getting over that hurdle, I was about the incorporate my logo into the design you see above. The only changed made was swapping the side the Logo and writer sit. I can’t wait to see what they look like in the flesh.

A few weeks back I sent my website to the Kaishoots team and this is the feedback I was given.

Overall I am a happy with the feedback I was given, might slight concern was the showreel and I am happy it was something the pinpointed. This is a sigh of relief.

My Cv is something I put a lot of time into, also something I tried to create thinking outside of the box, unlike any other CV I’ve seen before. Happy that it was picked up upon.

Oh! And Mental note; add Grad film trailer to my videos sections on my website.

Attaching my domain to my Wix website

Having already decided to continue developing my WIX site so I investigated how to attach my new theochambers.co.uk domain to my Wix web site. There is always a gotcha, for Wix it involved an upgrade from using the free site to a premium plan.

I selected the unlimited plan because I needed to upload large video files, this will cost £93.12 a year, choosing a Wix plan comes with domain name registration included in the price, so I bought the theochambers.co.uk domain and the Wix upgrade in the same transaction

Off the back of correspondence with the KaiShoots team, I managed to maintain a relationship with the team. Yesterday I went out with them on a music shoot to shadow to film for grime artist K2. The shoot was unlike no other shoot I had been on before. It was vibrant, and very fast paced, a lot of handheld shots and mounted shots, taken from a variety of different angels. To draw out a difference between shooting for a music video and shooting for film, is there film sets seem to be more static shots, shots that are more controlled and preplanned, there is a very serious atmosphere that comes along with that. However the music video shoot was loud, and there was generally a lot more going on at once.

As a follow up from the shoot I sent them an email asking if they would review my website and CV (on my website).

I hope to receive some positive feedback that pushes me to improve and develop my online presence

Scheduling

An Early shooting and scheduling plan, planning days and times for team meetings, cast and crew communications and sharing out responsibilities. this shoot schedule was like our bible over the filming months. Being Producer I had to insure their accuracy and that we were on task, and hitting our projected targets.

At times this was definitely a struggle, to motivate the team, as well as keep myself motivated. I found that it was easy to find myself slacking and falling behind if I took my eye off the ball for a day too long! Being producer is a full time job, enjoyable, varying tasking, interactive, demanding... yes, but very much full time.

I used a Gantt chart to help me plan the timing for the day. I got the idea after talking to my mum. It was really helpful to know who should be doing what, when. I found this a helpful tool in visually breaking down the day in to time frames so I could make more of a detailed day plan.

Film Research

This was used as a stimulus to inform the creation of the characters and the development of the script, for e.g. Immediately after Brexit there was a string of hate crimes around the country where some individuals to the right of politics felt that the Brexit opened the doors to permission to voice and act on their dislike of people who appear to originate from other places.

It’s all about the P’s script was also influenced by films like this is England which is based in 1980’s Britain and examines the interaction of cultures and the violence that can result from racial profiling and injustice. The characters Steve and Dan were created around the characteristics of anti-multi-culture, and typically uneducated, unskilled, far right politically leaning males.

A part of the research process was making sure our portrayal of the characters was authentic to their cultural background. One of issues we encountered was some confusion between Hindu and Islamic culture in terms of the names we decided to use and the types of things the characters would say and do. We went through a similar process for Mrs Alvita, making sure we did not mix West African, other Caribbean cultures and Jamaican culture. Changes were made to the script to remove these clashes for example the finalisation of the protagonist first name was a subject for debate because Patel is a Hindu name so we had to ensure the first name did not clash, his original name was Anjem, which we discovered is a Muslim name. We decided to change to Jasvinder that we discovered was Sikh, we finally settled on Rajan, a Hindu name. We encouraged the actors to let us know where the script conflicted with culture and made many small changes to it as a result.

#research #authencity #graduate film project

Quick Post Alert!

Our five-man team exceeded the target and raised 101% of what we asked for. We have raised £1510! Our film is one step closer to happening!!!!

After doing the percentages of those of donated, I was able to calculate that my personal network were responsible for 41% of the contributions.

#target acquired #happy days #graduate film project

First day of filming on the horizon

With our first filming day fast approaching (6 days away), its now time to get myself prepped and sorted. As part of my role as producer, I was responsible for producing and distributing the call sheets; this is the first call sheet for the first day of shooting. Our film shoots across two locations, this first location being the home of our main character.

To co-ordinate the information on the call sheet I used reminders on my phone, shared the dates and times of events on a spreadsheet and started to develop a Gantt chart.

#prep #match day #filming

Marketing 2

On the crowd funding page I wanted to address peoples barriers to giving by answering the questions they might like to ask

· About our film with video clip

· How much we need

· Who we are as a group and where we are from

· Who we are individually and the roles we play

· Costings, where your money is going

· What’s in it for you

· What we choose to make the film

· What we want to do with the film after it I made

· Closing thank you

Marketing 1

Making the fund raising page I decided to make it easy for people to give as little or as much as they wanted to without embarrassment and to offer something in return for their hard earned cash. These were the options

£2

Personal praise from Mr P

Thanks for donating; we'll put you in the special thanks sections at the end of our film!

£5

Personal praise from Mr P

Thanks for donating; we'll put you in the special thanks sections at the end of our film!

£10

Our community thanks you

You will receive a personalised written thank you from the crew, as well as being credited in the special thanks section of our film

£25

Special thanks from crew

You will earn yourself personal thanks in the credits of the film, special thanks from cast and crew, an A4 poster, a digital copy of the film + and physical DVD copy of the project!

£50

You are part of the team!

You are now part of the team! Congratulations. We reward you with special thanks in the credits of the film, special thanks from cast and crew, an A4 poster, a digital copy of the film, physical DVD copy of the project; last but not least, you have now be promoted to Executive Producer! This will also appear in the final credits

Indiegogo crowd funding site was selected for this reason.

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