Decisions, decisions

It’s 6.30 am, it’s shoot day one and I am totally exhausted. That’s because I have slept for about ten minutes. The nights’ sleep before the first day of a shoot is never a good one. Before I go to bed, I diligently prepare my schoolbag (per se.) I have my script and my plastic Bic retractable pencil. I like to use the same pencil for the entire shoot. This pencil is my only requirement in the stationery department from the production office and I think in this instance, in deference to our tight budget, I supplied my own. (You’d think I’d get hired more often just for that cost saving fact alone.)

I have my call sheet, with my name on it should I drop or lose it (about twenty times a day.) It is neatly placed in its foldable plastic folder, which I will keep in my back right pocket with said pencil. I have my shot list printed and also placed in the plastic folder. I am ready for action and nothing can stop me.

Except, if I lose my pencil.

If an actor drops dead or the location burns down two hours before we’re due to shoot on it, I can handle it. I just need to rethink what I had in mind – shoot the scene in a different way, in a different place (with possibly a different actor.) However, if I lose my pencil, that’s different – that’s catastrophic. No ordinary run-of-the-mill HB jobbie can replace it not to mention, a pen. You may think I am exaggerating but ask any 1st AD who has ever worked with me; they will tell you that it’s true.

So, having fretted and tossed and turned about this and other potential problems all night long I get up. I am already fantasising about going to bed in about twelve hours time. The scenario - I will come back from this first day of shooting which will have gone amazing well. We will have finished 45 minutes early - anything longer than that and you’ve seriously forgotten to do something like maybe shoot several scenes. I will eat a wonderful meal cooked by child’s father, which will be ready as soon as I walk in the door. I will kiss child and child’s father goodnight while he washes up and generally cleans the house (and child.) I will slide the next days meticulously prepared shot list into its plastic folder. Take out today’s completed one. Slip under the freshly laundered sheets and by asleep by 9. Yeah.

But before I get to that fantasy, I have still to get up – get to the location and get through the first shot of the film.

We have ten scenes to shoot today. We are shooting all of them in various different areas at the corporate headquarters of a very well known company. I marvel as to how Brendan, the location manager secured this location. I’m beginning to suspect that he carries a loaded gun and several cans of mace when he does his initial meet-and-greet with location owners.

Today, I’m going to walk to work. Normally, as part of your contract, a director is collected and driven to work and then driven home at the end of the day. This is not so much because we are such important people but more so to make sure that you actually turn up.

I decide to listen to some tunes on the way. There is something wonderful about the simplicity of me meandering down the canals to work early on this Saturday morning on the first day of shooting my first feature film with my ipod stuck in my ears and no one else around. I feel very happy. So, for some inexplicable reason, I choose a song called ‘Rains down trouble by Kevin Doherty – its’ possibly the most melancholic song I know and ordinarily when I listen to it I’m blubbing by the end of the first verse but today I feel invincible.

But paranoia is never far away and as I walk I start to wonder if they’ll turn up – the crew and actors. You get so caught up in the preparations of the film and what you have to do to pull the whole thing together that sometimes you forget that there is a whole team of people there to help you achieve that. I’m fretting madly now. It’s the ten-minute sleep and the suicidal song I insist on listening to that’s making me feel like this.

Being a director is a lonely job. You are Miss ‘Billy-no-mates.” The crew and cast may all love you but there’s always a slight distance. And never is this more apparent than on the dining bus at lunchtime. If the director sits on the dining bus a crew or cast member will never choose to sit beside you. They will first fill all the seats around you downstairs and when they’re full they’ll go upstairs where it’s much smellier and hotter. If upstairs is full they will come back down and make some of their colleagues squeeze up tight so that three of them can fit in the one seat and you the director will still have three empty seats around you. It’s because they think that you are at all times thinking about your work – mulling over the scene you just shot or planning the one you are about to shoot, working, working, always working and they don’t want to disturb you.

You are in fact, mostly likely wondering whether you will have the toffee cheesecake or the bread and butter pudding.

However, we will not have this problem on this film. We don’t have a dining bus.

I get to the location full of trepidation and wander in.

They’re all there – the camera and sound guys are setting up, the actors are in costume and make up and hair, the 2nd Ad is already preparing the next days call sheet, the trainee AD is practicing looking important; it’s all happening in perfect peace and harmony without me. I smile and greet everyone who does the same and then head straight for the breakfast table where everyone leaves me some space to make my first big decision of the day.

Croissant or Danish?