Roll on the wrap party

This past week has been non-stop and I’m exhausted. Fortunately I had time off between my last production and this one so I have the stamina for it…barely.

From what I can ascertain there are a couple of different problems affecting the production, two minor and one major. The minor ones involve an LA crew working with a NY production team; there have been several handbags at dawn moments between the DOP and Producer. Another issue is that the team seems more interested in getting jiggy with one another than actually working but that is a different matter.

The number one issue we are having is the talent attempting to drive the narrative; very politely but firmly insisting we shoot certain events. We are not preventing them from attending any meetings, I mean that they want us to break the schedule and actually get these meetings on camera because they feel it is part of the show. This wouldn’t be so bad if not for two things 1) it undermines and frustrates the producer who is responsible for making sure everything shot in the field makes linear sense for the edit and 2) it totally fucks the schedule.

Don’t believe me? Try this:

To slot a 10 min on-camera meeting into a fully scheduled 12 hour day, I need to free up approx 1.25 hours, which means trimming other meetings and cutting cameras to enable the team to be in two places at once while praying mightily for no major traffic problems or other hold ups.

Because talent insists on traveling separately, even from one another we’re not able to do a traditional (and convenient) point and shoot. The team therefore needs to arrive 30 minutes before to set up and another 30 afterwards to de-rig, load the gear and move to the next destination.  At the moment, the schedule is so tight we have PAs setting, lighting and de-rigging with camera and sound rushing in to literally point and shoot before running off in a cab to the next location. It’s real fly by the seat of your pants stuff and a hell of a lot of work for thirty seconds of camera time, that doesn’t drive the narrative and may not make it to the screen.

Imagine having to slot two of those in per day, at the last minute, into an already over stuffed schedule and you can begin to imagine my week. Thank goodness tomorrow is the last day.

Roll on the wrap party, I’ve earned it!

Reality Bites back

After recently being laid off from my last job due to budget cutbacks (i.e. the boss having run out of things to blame on me), I have got a few weeks work on a well known reality show….

As per usual, the phone call came out of the blue and at the last minute.  I’d heard about the job through a friend and interviewed a couple of weeks earlier. Despite being told I’d hear back within a couple of days, I heard nothing and presumed correctly I hadn’t got the job. The PM position went to an MTV girl but they called in a panic a week later needing a senior coordinator to manage the schedules. It’s not my usual position but in these times, who can afford to turn down work? So I took it, starting 9am the following morning at a location ‘to be disclosed’.

I got a call late in the evening while having drinks with an old colleague; the team was to be based in the Lower East Side and I should head there to be met by the PM in the morning.

Of course, I was excited to be working so soon after being let go and I drank way too much, went to bed wayyy too late and arrived on set knackered and just a little nauseous. In the lobby I correctly identified the PM who didn’t seem to have a clue who I was but took me upstairs anyway with a bunch of hyper active PA’s.

Upstairs in our make shift production office there was carnage with kit brought over from LA spread liberally across the office. There were a shit load of people in the room, rushing about like loons and I knew instantly it was going to be one of those shows… Eventually we managed to get everyone together and have a production meeting to go through the schedule.

There was instantly tension between the producer and the DP and the entire schedule was questioned before the day had even begun. After a polite argument everyone agreed to keep to the schedule as it was and off they went.

I spent the entire day trying to get details about the schedule both for the week and for me. I was just asked to come in and work, no idea how long. Eventually at about 8pm, when everyone had returned, wrapped and gone out for dinner, I was able to get the PM to spend 5 minutes with me giving me ANY information to put into a workable schedule.

At about 10.30pm, I was finally able to produce the call sheet, just 12 hours to write one document, which was held up by lack of information, lack of attention and okays from 4 different people. No wonder people in reality are working 20 plus hour days.

“Flat is the new booming”

So the economy is in the toilet and everyone is freaking out, what people really want to know, particularly here in New York where there is a big cloud hanging over the production tax credit, is what does this mean for us?

It looks like we’re about to find out… http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/business/media/11adco.html?_r=1

What this really means, aside from an increase in product placement integration, is that networks and production companies are reducing their budgets and we’re going to have to do a hell of a lot more with a hell of a lot less.

This will make my job much harder as I try to convince PA’s, camera crew, editors to work for even lower rates per day and try to squeeze down the facilities company to ridiculous weekly rates, which is not only difficult but hard for me to stomach because I believe that people work hard and should be compensated fairly.

Having less money for staff also means my choices are limited when it comes to hiring. Someone who’s good and experienced won’t work for a lower rate so I’m forced to take a chance on people who have less experience. Sometimes this works out well but more often than not, it leads to lots of basic mistakes and cost more in the long run. At best it will be a PA not getting a release form signed and at worst it’s a cameraman shooting an entire day with the date stamp left on (true story).

In the last year I worked on three separate productions, each with the same network I won’t mention and each of them was woefully under budgeted – actually I managed to bring one in $30k under budget but that’s another matter. In each circumstance there was no contingency for dealing with the unexpected and of course the only predictable thing about making television is how unpredictable it is.

 Whether it is a PA blocking up a toilet, a supplier pulling out of a trade out agreement at the last minute or needing security for a ‘celebrity’ shoot, there needs to be money set aside somewhere to cover this. These are all true stories by the way!

And of course, being the production manager means that no matter what happens, whether the production is under budgeted or some event beyond our control occurs (yes that sometimes happens) a penny over budget is the kiss of death and ultimately the PM’s fault.

I don’t really know what the solution is to what’s heading our way whether it is people dropping their rates, integrating product placement to reduce costs or taking on the inexperienced, which seems to be the trend judging from the amount of ads up these days for production interns.

Ultimately we know what will end up happening. The reduced budgets will one way or another end up adversely affecting quality in terms of content and production values, which benefits no-one and who knows where that will lead us.

A couple of other interesting articles about how the economic crisis is affecting media folk. http://www.medsiabistro.com/articles/cache/a10468.asp http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/television/news/e3ia82652ffac56b32e1ab3d6580d61a5a6

 

What do I do????

I’m a Television Production Manager. If you’re not familiar with this role, in a nutshell I’m responsible for delivering a fully compliant show to the network who commissions it, on time and within the allocated budget. The two biggest areas of responsibility are the budget and the schedule, both of which need to be monitored very carefully. This means I am involved in every aspect of the production from hiring staff to purchasing props, deciding how many shoot days we can afford, which locations we use, which cameras we shoot on, how much we can spend on lunch etc.

A lot of my job involves trying to remain within budget without compromising the on-camera content and I’m often called upon to make on the spot judgment calls, which need to be quick and correct. This does not always happen.

In an ideal world the Show Producer and the Production Manager collaborate to produce the best content at the lowest costs. This rarely happens and the expression is often used for the Production Manager that “you get s**t on from above and s**t on from below”. That’s a pretty good description of some of the shows I’ve worked on. Fortunately they’re not all like that.

The traditional route to becoming a Production Manager is to work first as a Production Coordinator. Some people prefer to bounce up the food chain as quickly as possible but I chose to learn my craft really, really well working as a Coordinator for several years producing call sheets, arranging shoots, coordinating on set and supporting the PM while I learned everything there was to know about production.

As a Coordinator, I worked in every genre; scripted comedy, documentary, reality, game shows, you name it I’ve worked on it. My specialty tended to be small cable shows no-one had ever heard of. But from time to time I got to work on a show that I was proud to tell people ‘I worked on that’.

My first ever production was one of those shows. It was a live 90min outside broadcast from the middle of a Central London street, as an archeological dig searched for part of a WW2 plane that had gone down defending Buckingham Palace. What possessed the Production Manager to hire me, who had no discernible TV Production experience I couldn’t tell you, but my enthusiasm must have won her over in the interview because hire me she did. We did a month of prep, VT shoots and archive research during which time I was shown every step of the way what I was expected to do and I was grateful for the instruction. I paid careful attention to what I was being taught and never questioned or second guessed my Production Manager.

The day of broadcast went by without a hitch despite the director moving a bunch of wheelchair bound geriatrics from our secondary location to the primary one during the commercial break. (The word nerve wracking was made for moments like that).

We found the plane and pulled it out seemingly moments before the end of broadcast. A small crowd had gathered, applauding and waving Union Jacks for the final moments. I was exhausted from running around for 16 hours straight but I was hooked and loved the rush of adrenaline from having questions and problems fired at me from all sides and being able to handle it all. Little did I know this would be the last show to go off without a hitch.

THE PRODUCTION MANAGER

The Television Production Manager works freelance in New York City managing impossible budgets, working unworkable schedules and exasperating producer-directors at every given opportunity while keeping everyone happy on set. Your basic miracle worker.

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