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"A knowledge and love of film language and film history. ​

A strong grasp of what drama is and how to use it. ​

tell stories that comes from passionately held ideas about the human condition."

(Rabiger, 2020)

I will be able to use skills that I have attained from previous filming projects and knowledge from analysing films to bring across my own ideas and opinions to make our video project both professional and unique, but with 'dramatic' tropes that are recognisable and relatable, such as the theme of 'loss', 'friendships/relationships' and 'attachment'. These are all tropes that relate to the 'human condition' and are found within everyone. I am excited to be able to take on a 'producer' role, because normally I have preferred roles that have more creative input to the story of the short film, but I want to be able to focus on the 'behind the scenes' work that has to be done alongside a short film such as planning and people managing. I look forward to learning these skills, despite the challenges that could come from taking on tasks I am not as familiar with.

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Understanding my role as 'Production Manager'

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Understanding my role as 'Production Manager'

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"What is production management? Well, how about facilitating a project so that it gets made smoothly, efficiently, properly, on budget and within the schedule."

(Stradling, 2010)

One major concept that I strive for when it comes to any project, wether it be in film, or in any kind of work, is the concept of maintaining schedule and order. As the 'Broken window' theory states, it takes as little as a broken window in a singular house to eventually lead to an entire neighbourhood into more serious crimes. I take this theory into the world of work, and in this case within the filming industry, as all it takes is 1 team member to be absent, or 1 piece of equipment that we are missing, and that can lead to the entire project being under jeopardy. I have had instances in the past where I have had to create contingency plans for when thing such as these happen, such as back-up actors and crew, and I plan on doing the same in this project to maintain the schedule and order that is so important when completing any team-related task.

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The production manager is the main co-ordinator and is the overseer of all of the other roles, making sure equipment is booked, filming permits are created, locations are found and are ready to be filmed in, actors are briefed, keeping a schedule for the team, giving input on the script and sharing our own thoughts and concepts for the story.

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Working with the director and the assistant director to create a compelling story and also to work out how that story can be realised into a short film

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Have meetings with the different departments, then understanding where the departments are at, and working out how to assist them if they are behind.

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Most importantly, enjoy the process. Make sure that the film and the story is something that I feel passionate about so that it is in my best interest to come out of this module with a project that I'm not only proud of, but something I can show on my portfolio when I go into the film industry after my University course.

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Our first session was mostly about going through each department and learning about our roles and what was expected of us through the project.

Although a lot of us knew each other already, there were a few unfamiliar faces, including our director Vedad. We briefly introduced ourselves and what our roles were so that Vedad could see what experience we had, and so that we could all feel comfortable working in a team together.

Being a filmmaker "requires an ability to collaborate and an understanding of how to get the best out of a creative team." (Rabiger, 2020). Knowing this, I made sure I got to know the team a little better, asking them questions about what projects they have done in the past, and asking them about how they feel about the role they have been given for this project. There were a few people that have not had any experience in being in a crew for a filming project, so I gave them my insight from previous projects for what to expect, and ensure that they can ask myself or some of the other crew for help if they get stuck.

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"The producer supervises the development of an idea until a director is brought on board to complete the rewrites and prepare the script for production" (Irving & Rea, 2013)

After our introductions, we then moved our attention to reading the script that we would be making a short film about. We learnt that we would be creating a short film about a character who has a pet goldfish (hence the title 'The Goldfish'), and her struggle with letting go. After a couple more read throughs I identified other emotions and feelings that the script portrays, such as attachment, and loss. It took a while for me to understand the draft script initially, but after recognising these themes, I understood that as a team, we could do a really excellent job and conveying this script into an engaging short film.

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During the first week, after class, I identified that it was too overwhelming to be emailing the group back and fourth constantly, so I took it upon myself to create a 'Teams' group for the project. I had others tell me to make a 'Whatsapp' group-chat, but I thought that by doing it through 'Teams', I could split the channels up between the different departments, such as; Camera, Editing, Sound etc. This also meant that the production managers and directors would be able to privately chat about the organisation and the content of the short film. This Teams group-chat became vital to sending production documents, organising equipment, and figuring out how to make this concept a reality.

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As I went into further detail with analysing the script, I put a message with an idea relating to the content of the short film. I had the idea of alluding that 'Sophie' (Lena's sister in the script) might actually not be real, but a 'conception' of how Lena thinks 'J.C' (the goldfish) is speaking to her. Relating it to a way Lena is coping with loneliness and attachment. We then decided to use this, and worked out a few ways we could imply that Sophie is not real after all.

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Sam, Vedad and I had a Teams meeting after lesson to discuss any other ideas we had in the script. Vedad also gave us an idea of how to distribute the workload on a department-by-department basis. He showed us a previous classes Excel spreadsheet which had the different roles in the team, as well as different tasks that they would need to complete over the course of the project. He asked us to use the template and insert the different tasks that our specific group would need, such as prop sourcing and casting auditions. I then checked all of these tasks over with the other production manager Sam which advised a few other tasks to be added too. There were also notes beside the tasks which allowed the departments to clearly understand what they needed to do.

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In the meeting with Vedad and Sam, we also had an example short film to watch called 'Cautionary Tales' (Us, 2018) which had a similar scene to one we had in our script, set in a community centre and has people with addictions all circled around eachother. We then, in our own time, watched this, and tried to take inspiration from the way it was filmed.

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"The dialogue-driven film tells its story mainly through dialogue exchanges." (Rabiger, 2020)

Our script had large sections that had dialogue, we were tasked to try to work out how we can make the dialogue scenes effective. And make sure that these scenes didn't seem 'boring'.

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During the week outside of our lesson-time, the directors put a casting call into our group for the different characters in the scene. Each of the cast gave an audition via a video for 2 roles they wanted to perform.

In the next session, we had a script read-through with the cast in the roles we decided seemed the best fit.

We were happy with our choices of actors. Myself and the other directors and producers gave input with how we want the characters to be conveyed.

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Using the tasks from the Excel spreadsheet we made, Sam and I identified the different focuses for the different departments for preparation for this next class.

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We went through a few ideas we had for locations, including the Allerton sports hall, and different lakes we could use for the park. I gave input for which locations would be practical, and which locations would be difficult to get filming permits for.

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"It is not enough merely to know the story line; the [filmmaker] must also understand the central theme—what the story is really all about. The theme represents your desire to communicate something specific about the human condition. It may be one of the reasons that attracted you to the story in the first place." (Irving & Rea, 2013)

I made sure by speaking to the directors and the other producer that we all understood the 'central theme' and it was clear from the script that the human condition we would be exploring would be the emotions connected to loss and attachment.

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During our class session, myself and Sam organised meetings for each department to work out what still needed to be done. Our main priority was the location, as we still had not got anywhere secured yet. We also had calls with Lighting, Camera and Sound to make sure the right equipment has been listed so that we can begin to list what needs to be booked next week. We also organised Teams calls with the directors too where we would discuss what the camera department has put forward with shot lists and different script breakdowns and how to incoorporate these all together.

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Sam and I lead a discussion in the class by going to the front and showing the list of tasks that need to be done. As well as asking for input, listening to ideas that some of the department had in mind. This was a great way for us to connect the team together and make it a project that everyone feels involved in.

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"THE PRODUCTION TRIANGLE—You only get 2 out of 3 Most independent films want to be Good and Cheap so that means you can't have the third side of the triangle — Fast. If you want it Good and Fast, it won't be Cheap and if you want it Fast and Cheap, it won't be any Good." (Ryan, 2010)

During my reading research, I discovered the production triangle, and made it applicable for this project. I realised that we did not have a great budget, so I made sure we focussed on making sure the short film stays good and also fast as we only have roughly a week to shoot and another week to edit.

I will also apply this research into future projects, giving me the understanding of how difficult it is to balance all 3, and how you should only aim to get two corners of the triangle effectively.

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"You want to cast as far in advance as possible before your first day of shooting. Ideally" ... "you'd want to have a minimum of one month to spend time rehearsing and doing a wardrobe fitting and hair/ makeup tests. You want to start the audition weeks or months before scheduled rehearsals so you have enough time to find the best actor for each role." (Ryan, 2010)

We made sure after we had secured the actors, we had costume and props in mind for making the character 'click'. The hair and makeup departments also started with preparing a mood board. We made sure the cast had plenty of preparation time in order to perfect their role.

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Sam, the directors and I then had the planned Teams calls with the different departments. This was the week before our presentation so we used these calls to finalise what needed to still be done before the presentation. I volunteered to create set-up documents with each department, the above screenshot is an example. Creating set-up documents for each department would then make it easier to fill in the final set-up documents for when we begin shooting. As well as this, these documents helped with working out what was still left to do.

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We were not able to find a room that we could leave props and equipment overnight at University, so we had to speak to different departments to work out who was able to take equipment for each day. We then gathered the draft list of equipment and sorted it between 3 of us to keep. I volunteered to take the lighting, Lily volunteered to take the Camera equipment, and the sound equipment was shared between their department.

Another problem we had, was contacting certain departments. Because some of the team did not receive notifications from teams, I had to find their university emails to contact them to organise a Teams call, or to tell them that a certain task still needed to be completed.

We had not yet secured a location, so myself and Sam helped Lily and Lola with location recces and contacting certain councils and buildings for filming permission.

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Getting to the last week before the presentation, Sam and I had some of the production assistants and continuity departments ask for information on what they needed to do in pre-production. We still had a few tasks left to do as a team, so instead of Sam and I completing these, we wrote down the tasks that were left and messaged the Teams channel to split some of the work up so we could complete pre-production more efficiently.

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The Directors and the producers including myself had a meeting in our Friday session, making a couple changes to the script such as altering the ending to make the idea of 'Sophie' being a made up illusion of Lena's more convincing. We brainstormed ideas, and Vedad took these onboard and created a different ending on the script during the week afterwards.

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As pre-production was coming to a close, Sam and I went through the Tasks Excel spreadsheet, and contacted the departments that had a couple of tasks left to do. We made sure that they knew what they were doing and that they could have the tasks done by the end of the week so that we would be ready after the Easter break to begin filming.

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In this week, we prepared our presentations to the class, showing the different pre-production tasks we have completed, and giving our final insights with the planning of production. I used my presentation to try to help give the team a better understanding of how we can go into the production week with plenty of planning, and tried to boost the morale of the team, encouraging everyone to work together, as I believe this project is something we can all be proud of together.

I was very happy with how my presentation went, and I believe I helped the team to feel as though they can put their trust in me for the rest of the project.

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Initially, we had issues with finding a suitable room to do our rehearsals in, so Sam, the location team and I had a call before the week started to work out what rooms were available. On such short notice we were only able to find a small rehearsal room on the top floor of the New Adelphi. This was fine for the scenes that just included 'Lena', but for the scenes that included the whole cast we tried to find something bigger and more appropriate for our team size.

Sam, Lola and I created a document that had the different locations that were booked out for each day of rehearsals, and created a schedule with the times and room numbers which would help with the creation of the call sheets.

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For the first day of rehearsals/planning, Sam and I created this call sheet. We would then use this template to create future call sheets. We made sure to include the location and times so that we could all be fully prepared on the day.

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The directors, camera crew, sound crew and cast used this day to make a rough edit of how we want the different scenes to look like, Recreating the shots from the shot list, and trying the different camera angles that we thought could be a challenge, such as the 360 degree shot that spins around the characters in a scene.

Sam and I was not involved with this process, so we used this time to gather final documents and information from the other departments such as: Helping the costume department secure costumes, listing the props we would need for the different scenes and ensuring these would be sourced in time, creating the final equipment lists and making sure everything was booked out for production week and help to find the locations for the community centre scene and the park scene.

"Remember that you are the one setting the tone on set, so being relaxed, calm, and centered will be important. If you’re anxious and stressed, it will show and will affect the space." (Lyons, 2015) I made sure that I stayed positive and maintained a constant line of communication to the team, because if the producers or directors seemed to panic, that would then rub off onto the rest of the team. So I made sure I was able to speak to the crew to let them know of the plans and what they needed to do.

During this rehearsal day, we secured the community centre location with Lily for the Monday and Tuesday the following week.

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Sam and I used the spare time we had to start making the set-up documents for the different days of filming, and also make call sheets for the other rehearsal days and filming days

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I kept the lighting equipment at my house overnight as I live fairly close to the University, and I was able to drive the equipment to the rehearsal location. This meant though that I had to do round trips too and from the rehearsal location, but it was the only way for the equipment to be somewhere safe overnight.

We were able to use the motion-capture room to do a rehearsal of the main community centre scene which included all of the cast. I had to fill in for the character of 'Marla' as Holly was going to be late. So I stood in to read her lines.

Sam and I continued to create the set-up documents, and starting inserting floor-plans and costume designs into the documents.

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On the Thursday morning, we went through the edited draft footage from the rehearsal and made some last adjustments to the shot lists. Overall we were very happy with these shots. The rest of Thursday morning we went through the plan for the filming days, speaking to each person working out who from which department needed to be on set on certain days.

Sam and I also gathered the floor-plans from lighting and camera crew to finalise the set-up documents.

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In the afternoon, a small group consisting of the producers, director, set dressers, lighting and camera went over to the apartment location which would take place in Lily's house. We brought the equipment over so that in the morning we were able to begin recording straight away. We also took notes on where different shots would be filmed, as well as how to block light efficiently. We then began to organise the room and furniture to match the floor plan too.

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With the crew and cast prepared, we were able to begin filming. I was able to bring some of the crew in my car so that we could begin to start preparing the set as soon as possible. We arrived at 8:30am so that we could begin filming ideally no later than 10:30am.

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There was lots of different lighting issues we had on this day of filming, and there was only one member of the lighting crew on set, so I helped with placing the black make-shift curtain over the windows to block out the light into the main room.

On the day we realised that the robotic 'goldfish' prop still looked too similar to a clownfish. So Josie from props and I drove to a nearby beauty shop to buy orange nail vanish to paint the fish with to make the fish look more realistic.

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Before the filming began, we used the seperate set-up documents from each department to create the finished set-up document that would be used for each day of filming. This had the floor plans, equipment, design and other preparation information that are needed for filming.

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I was really happy to see everything come together as filming started, it felt like all of the jigsaw pieces of pre-production seemed to fall into place, and compared to previous projects, I did not feel under-prepared coming into filming. To see all the departments managing to do their jobs successfully made me feel like Sam and I did a great job at organising and scheduling the team. To see everything come together felt very satisfying, and I felt confident that we would come out of this project with something that the whole team can be proud of.

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Despite being low on time, we managed to finish the scene by the end of the day. Even though I felt stressed about completing it on time, I maintained positivity throughout filming, as I remembered what I had researched before about staying calm and relaxed so that the rest of the crew feels the same.

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In the time where the crew were filming, Sam and I made sure that the call sheets and the setup documents for future filming dates next week were ready so that the crew were prepared.

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After picking up the equipment from Lily's house, I arrived early at 8:30am to begin preparing the set for filming. Thomas was one of the actors for the scene and was the only person from the lighting team on set, so I decided to help the lighting department for the day.

My first task was to secure the make-shift black curtains onto the windows with clips and tape. I worked with Vedad and a ladder to make sure they would stay in place throughout filming (as best we could). I also helped with set dressing, attaching the china ball lamps across the room. These would keep falling off throughout filming so I had to stay outside to hold them in place when it got windy each time we took a shot.

Before we could start filming, we realised we needed weights to be attached to the Jib, Josie and I then drove to Argos to buy some free-weights that we could use to stabilise the Jib.

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Each day of rehearsal and filming I had to drive back and forth from University 4 times a day to drop the lighting equipment off at the University, this was because I was the only one that lived close and had a car. I also took Sam, Will, Morgan and others to and from the set each day too.

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Collecting the weights from Argos

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We unfortunately were not able to use any of the footage from this first day of filming due to miscommunication of costumes.

We used this day as a practise run instead, so that the next day we were prepared adequately.

I drove the equipment over to Lily's house after the the filming day completed as she was happy to keep them at hers overnight.

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With our 'practise' run out of the way, I picked up the equipment from Lily's with help from Will and Sam, then drove everything to the community centre. We were able to prepare the set within an hour as we knew where the props and equipment needed to be placed from the day before. As soon as the actors had their makeup done and costumes prepared we were able to start filming.

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To make things easier, we decided not to use the black curtains and instead I hung up one of the spare curtains from the other community centre room adjacent to the one we were filming in, safely using a ladder to do so.

I also set up the china ball lamps using the ladder too in the same positions as yesterday.

For the rest of the day, I didn't have a lot to do, but I made sure I was readily available in case there were any roles that I needed to fill in for. I made sure we all kept to the schedule to help make sure we finished in time. I was also involved with people managing, making sure everyone knew where they needed to be.

I used some of the free time to prepare the call sheet for tomorrow.

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At the end of the day, I took the lighting equipment back to the New Adelphi with Thomas, Sam and Will as we did not need to use this for our last day of filming due to it taking place outside in the sun. We kept a set of reflectors just in case.

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Our final day of filming involved recording mainly scene 4, with a few establishing shots for the first scene too. I drove to Carrs park which was the other side of Manchester.

We brought a smaller team for filming on this day, because we had a smaller set. This meant that Sam and I had to fill in for different roles again.

We all as a team transported the equipment by carrying it 15 minutes into the park where the filming would be taking place.

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I had to stop the public from walking past the frame of the shot by politely asking them to wait.

I blew dandelions over the camera which was to help with the atmosphere of the scene.

I used the clapper board to signify what scene was being filmed.

I also took on the role of controlling the fish by going into the river and attaching the fish to a string which I would drag with me down stream. Josie helped put the fish and string together too.

I made sure to keep track of time, as we all had parking for a certain amount of time and we had to hand the equipment in before 5pm.

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Some of these shots were difficult to film as we had to manage members of the public so that they didn't walk into frame. We had a couple of shots that had members of the public in the background, but we decided we would have to crop them out in the edit.

The robot fish stopped working, which is why I had to step in to control it.

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We finished our shoot at 3:45pm, which meant we were perfectly on time to hand in the equipment before 5pm. The production crew including myself were very happy with the past days of filming so we decided to celebrate by having a relaxing time at the SU Bar.

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Helping the editing team the day before the deadline

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Now that filming is complete, we could now pass the baton over to the editing and continuity team.

Although I am not part of the editing team, I came in twice to help out with different parts of the edit so that we would be finished before the deadline. I linked the sound files to the video files and faded the audio between the shots.

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Overall, I was very happy with how myself and the team were able to efficiently create a professional grade short film. I had to go through a roller coaster of emotions and managed many stressful situations, but I'm glad that things happened how they did, as it was a great learning curve and will help me with my future career in the film industry.

Firstly, I was very happy to be able to step up into a position where I would be people-managing and scheduling a larger project and team. This was a new experience to me as I have only been a producer for smaller projects with a team of 4-5 at most. I would now say that because of this module, people-managing is one of my strengths.

I did not realise before coming into this project how much work a producer has to do, and that you have to be on top of all of the paperwork and different departments. It was very stressful at first making sure each department was up to speed with their work, but after a few Teams meetings and messages, I was able to see the progress of pre-production work and help departments that were behind with work.

A less technical but more practical difficulty I had throughout this project, mainly in the filming week, was keeping mine and the teams energy levels up, as working on the project for 9 hours a day for multiple days is a lot more than what I am used to.

I worked really well with Sam as a producing partner, and we were able to bounce of each other well, and most tasks we shared between us, especially the paperwork and pre-production work. We also worked really well with the assistant directors, when it came to organising the team. I also worked very well with the director Vedad, I listened and took on board lots of industry related information from him which will be useful for after University when I get into the filming industry. I mainly let the directors lead the way with creative input, but I added my own ideas and thoughts in the meetings as I feel passionate for making a short film that the entire team is proud of.

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Irving, D. K., & Rea, P. W. (2013). Producing and Directing the Short Film and Video (pp. 50, 95). CRC Press.

Lyons, S. (2015). Indie film producing : the craft of low budget filmmaking (p. 118). Focal Press.

Rabiger, M., Mick Hurbis-Cherrier, & Mercado, G. (2020). Directing : film techniques and aesthetics (pp. 20, 27, 200). Routledge.

Ryan, M. A. (2010). Producer to producer : a step-by-step guide to low-budget independent film producing (pp. 125, 128). Michael Wiese Productions.

Stradling, L. (2010). Production Management for TV and Film (p. 1). Bloomsbury Publishing.

Us. (2018). Cautionary Tales (Award Winning Short Film) [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEsoDFBdQeU

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The day before the deadline, I was tasked to edit the credits scene at the end of the short film. This was because the editing team was busy with colour-grading and sound. This meant there was less pressure put on the editors.