One golden rule I’ve learned to make your pre-production easier (and how to speed up the tedious process)
Creatives frequently get bogged down by pre-production and I can’t blame you, it’s tedious, time-consuming, and usually produces headache-inducing stress. But if you’ve ever been in charge of a professional shoot you’ll know that the stuff that happens before a shoot is just as important as what happens on the shoot. Most Creatives, however, are usually idea people rather than organization-make-lists-create-spreadsheets-type-people (and if you happen to love pre-production this post still applies to you) so how can you make this process easier for Creatives?
Well here are a few things I learned while prepping our latest video series for the Risking Gravity campaign which you can view on our facebook here.
THE GOLDEN RULE: PURSUE MULTIPLE LEADS
That old saying about not putting all your eggs in one basket is very true, what’s also true is don’t rely on just having one egg. When you’re looking for crew, talent, locations, actors, partners, etc. it’s incredibly important to pursue multiple leads all simultaneously. Sure you can call one location and ask them if you can use their space, wait for a reply, and maybe it will work out. But it eats up an enormous amount of time and back-and-forth emailing which pulls your attention away from the creative part. Don’t underestimate the value of uninterrupted attention.
Here’s an alternative (this is what I did on this latest campaign) you can email 4 locations, 20 film crew candidates, 7 organizations, 8 body artists, and 6 equipment rental houses.
Now that seems like a lot I know, but it largely meant writing 5 email templates and then switching out the names and other particulars. It took about one day to write and send all these out. I got responses from about 80% of the people, of whom about 40% were actually good leads.
I narrowed down the field very simply: cost. Whoever could offer the best services for the least money was my go-to. Now, this is very, very important so please read carefully: I didn’t turn down everyone else.
You should always have back-ups to call on should one of your top choices turn you down, get booked by someone else, or simply not show up. Two days before our shoot day on this awesome shoot in London, we had 2 crew cancel, 2 rental houses say they can’t deliver on the shoot date, and one body artist showed up 4 hours late.
Lucky for us, I kept all the previous contacts and with a few simple phone calls was able to rectify what would have otherwise been a disaster. Long story short, I replaced the missing crew, hired a more reliable rental house, and had booked 2 other body artists ahead of time just in case. Shoot saved.
It’s important to note that it’s much easier to cancel someone you booked than it is to hire someone who you initially turned away. This is the first time I’ve run pre-production like this and yes, I will most definitely be running all my pre-production this way from now on.
Hope that helps you guys out! I know it seems like such a simple thing to do, but sometimes the simplest changes can have the most profound impact on your creative endeavor. If you guys try out this multi-lead method let us know how it works out in the comments below. And if you want to see a sample email I wrote let me know in the comments below and I can post that up for you.
Till next time, take risks, have fun, stay creative!
~Bogdan Z.