Apologies for the delayed return to the return to blogging – I’m not sure why I chose to re-start blogging just before going into production on yet another short film – I should plan these things better.
The film in question, Love Like Hers, went remarkably well despite a hectic schedule and 3 lost hours on the first morning thanks to the good old Yorkshire weather. The writer/director, Danny Lacey, has already detailed the ins and outs of a crazy 3 days on both his blog and his live show, which you can watch back on demand on his LiveStream channel, so I won’t go into it too much. For those of you who want a taste of what we went through, here’s a short behind the scenes vid from Danny’s YouTube Channel:
My role was essentially as an on-set coordinator, since I’d come on board too late to really be able to take a lot of the “real” production stuff from Danny. Although, frankly, I ended up with more than enough on my plate as it was. It definitely would have been an impossible mission had it not been for the extraordinary Bethan Davis, who started as a Production Assistant, but ended up as a Production Co-Ordinator/Production Manager and was outstanding, as was Danny’s girlfriend, Jacqui, who shouldered a huge amount of stress on Danny’s behalf.
If there was one mistake we made it was in not having enough time for me to take financial control of the picture, meaning all spending decisions had to come from Danny himself. That will doubtless be rectified in future projects together.
What I’ve learned over the last few weeks, though, is that I’m actually not only a big fan of, but also well suited to being a producer. I like the coordination, I enjoy the on-set challenges, but most of all I like to be able to help other writer/directors achieve their vision.
This became abundantly clear to me yesterday after spending over 2 hours in a script meeting with a first-time writer/director who’s got a great little story mapped out.
Louisa is unique in many ways, not simply because she has made a powerful and fascinating documentary exploring her physical and emotional recovery from an horrific accident. She also knows exactly where she stands in terms of skills, abilities and desires.
The script she sent to me has, at its heart, a really strong emotional pull and a really quirky, captivating idea behind it, but it it – by her own admission – in very rough form. Yesterday afternoon she stopped in to my place and we talked through the whole thing from start to finish and really started to delve deeply into the characters, where they were coming from and why they made the decisions they did. I’m totally confident that when she sends her second draft over it’ll be a vast improvement.
For those of you who want to know why I find Louisa such an exciting person to want to work with, check out her doc, The Highest Low:
And while I’m here, if there’s anyone out there with a script they want to turn or see turned into a finished product, I’m all for taking a look.