Productions: actors not showing up

 Actors not showing up

This will be a short blog as I will only discuss our first obstacle during production. Actors not showing up. 

For our first production day, we planned to film all the talents at Barnes & Noble, call time at 4pm. Our goal today was to totally complete scene 4 in one day; that was just wishful thinking because our expectations were not met. The first downfall was when I received notice from my newly casted talent that she would be unable to make it due to unexpected engagements. This did not sit well with me as she is one of the main characters who claimed she would be free. However, I did not let this ruin the potential of getting most of scene 4 filmed. Me and my cinematographer had to analyze our shot list to see what shots we can achieve with only 3/4 actors present; luckily our shot list was accommodated for that. We ultimately decided to spilt production for scene 4 into 2 days rather than one, the second one calling for all talents to complete scene 4. 

Unexpectedly... only two our of our 4 talents ended up showing. Both showing far later than call time, which caused us to finish production day an hour and 30 minutes later than planned. The 3rd talent that was supposed to be there, ended up not showing due to work, which is at some extent understandable as she did inform me of her working schedule way before, but we still planned for her to squeeze in at minimum 20 minutes to film her singular line. As a type c person, this triggered be a lot, as I heavily depend on organized, structured scheduling for the entire film; that includes pre-production, production, and post-production. It was frustrating trying to move around inconveniences when I myself felt that I was on a limited time crunch, with not much room to spare for absences and accommodating for those absences. At the end of the day, I had to remind myself that scheduling complications is very common and normal in the film industry, and it's something as a director, I should not let intimidate me, we shall find another way around. This also caused me to fix my call sheets.

Nevertheless, I appreciate those who did manage to show up the first day of production. We took advantage of what we had to filmed a good amount of shots for scene 4. This ultimately leaves us with less to do for Scene 4 day 2.