Time is marching on
Time is marching on, with less than 80 days till we start filming Scotland by Canoe there is still one heck of organisation needed to be done. I have just been in Scotland over the weekend and the weather has been typically Scottish, sunshine followed by snow then hail and back to sunshine. I feel I might have to remind the weather to get organised itself! But it will change and soon we’ll all be back in t-shirts and the winter will be well in the past and not spoken of for a good few months. There is so many elements into the project from small things like how many SD cards do we need and what solar charging system is needed to larger things such as fitness, route planning and interviews along the way. Keeping to a strict planning routine in the early stages is vital I find, if you fail the plan, you plan to fail so keeping focused is key. Living in London it’s very easy to be distracted by the bright lights and indulge into a socialising frenzy so with this always in the back of my mind I have cut late nights which helps make a dream into a reality; pushing a documentary from an idea all the way to television screens across the country and a DVD that will catch the corner of your eye when checking out at your local supermarket. With television commissioning so fierce, our pre-production planning down to the little bits and bobs is paramount. In the last few months I feel like I have learnt more about professional DSLR film-making and production than any degree course by doing a project for real and knowing that we need to know every fine detail about production to make it happen. Everything is possible, it’s the route from the idea to the end product which is the tricky part.