CHALLENGES & TAKEAWAYS

I spent the latter half of spring semester junior year preparing to bring a student crew to Georgia to shoot an intimate drama with 2 child actors over a 16-day period. Mostly, my work covered travel and accommodations, line producing, and accounting for the safety hazards of a set build, a pool scene, and sweltering exteriors.

I created 23 separate transportation itineraries to account for staggered call times, different origin airports, and different ground transportation and housing scenarios. The talent stayed at a hotel. The crew crashed at the director’s parents’ home, which had to be reorganized every other night to prep for the next shoot. Each room we shot in had to be carefully stripped of furniture, re-wallpapered with shelf liner atop a layer of paper tape, prop dusted, and graffitied to resemble an unfinished house during the 2009 recession. And every crew member had to have a place to sleep. Besides the art-heavy set builds, I also had to safety-proof a pool scene, a couple of sweltering exteriors, a scene with the 10-year-old hammering drywall, multiple staged falls, and running scenes with trip hazards.

My greatest challenge on this project was not the extensive prep work but the challenge of being present and hospitable while also doing 20 things at once. Make sure everyone is hydrated. Keep the moms at bay. Keep the kids psyched. Vibe check the crew every 10 minutes. Have dinner ready on time and plan your ingredients out 3 meals ahead. Stay under budget. This became especially hard after my co-producer had to leave on day 5 due to an emergency. The experience taught me to staff my own department as well as everyone else’s.

Although the two weeks of production stretched me thin, the impeccable morale kept me going. It felt like summer camp - and it was, by design.

CHALLENGES & TAKEAWAYS

This project had a larger scope than projects I’d previously worked on at NYU. As the lead physical producer, I oversaw everything logistical from checkouts to returns. Because there were so many moving parts, I had the opportunity to delegate meals, hotel booking, and the shepherding of extras to my U.P.M. and 2nd A.D., and I was able to focus more on the big picture rather than set gofering.

There were a lot of locations, including a historic movie theater, a high school, a home exterior in Staten Island, a dance studio, and a retro diner. This made for a tight schedule with lots of moves.

One of the trickier things I had to do for this film was find a picture car from the 1980s for a driving scene and devise a workaround to NYU’s tricky, auto-omitting insurance policy. The director wanted to see the actor driving, but NYU wouldn't allow it. In the end, I appealed to NYU Risk Management with a plan that involved the actor driving the car only 10 unobstructed feet for an exterior wide shot and utilizing poor man’s process for the rest of the scene. The plan was approved, I found a studio in Greenpoint with workable rates, and I coaxed the director into sacrificing a smidge of his vision.

My biggest takeaways from this project were that I became better at delegating and better at making the initial contact. I secured 4 locations on my own, and I was the primary contact for all of the location owners, plus the picture car owner. I had to delegate the more tedious tasks because I had to be present in case any one of the moving parts stopped working and a creative solution was needed.

CHALLENGES & TAKEAWAYS

This was the first NYU film that I produced - fall semester, sophomore year - and it laid the groundwork for me. It was a small, friendly, synergistic team, and every crew member had a special connection to the project. Which - considering the abundance of ego in NYU film - was a miracle for being my first producing endeavor.

We shot this film in 2 days - one day at a neighborhood park, requiring a permit, and one day at my co-producer’s house. The script called for a merry-go-round and a seesaw, which was tricky, because the city banned merry-go-rounds and seesaws about 10 years ago. We scoured the tristate area and finally found a traditional merry-go-round in Islip, Long Island. We outsourced the construction of a seesaw.

My co-producer, Kara Bartek, took the lead on this project. Mainly, I was at the ready to relieve her of tedious tasks and to absorb her knowledge. I took care of the catering. I was also the travel captain. I discovered that the U.P.M. role is very important when dietary restrictions figure prominently in your crew.

My biggest challenge on this project was dealing with a Long Island mom at the park who kept sending her kids into our frame. I asked her nicely twice to please respect us - and if not us, then our permit - but she did not believe that we had a permit, and she called the police. I almost lost my temper. I backed off. We waited for the police to come, showed them our permit, and nodded politely when they told us that our permit didn’t allow us exclusive access to the merry-go-round. I learned that there are always going to be uncontrollable factors when you are shooting in a public space, even if you’ve cleared your shoot with the town government. We could have cleared it with the neighborhood board or posted signs in the days leading up to our shoot. Not that any of these steps would have prevented the sabotage, but they may have given us a little more control.

In spite of the holdup, the film got finished and has performed incredibly well at festivals. This is 100% to Lilena Marinou's credit. My biggest takeaway from this project was that I seek out passionate, goodhearted directors, and I prioritize the synergy of the crew. Since then, all of my productions have been efficient and good-vibey.

CHALLENGES & TAKEAWAYS

This was the first film that I lead produced but was not on set for. It was difficult for me to find an equal to pass the wand to, especially because this production happened over Thanksgiving and all of my usual picks had gone home. I found two versatile sophomores to team up on line producing and unit production management, and I didn’t hear from them for the first 12 hours - a surprise to me, but it spoke to the effectiveness of my prep.

We shot for 2 days in Brooklyn in an AirBnb, a bodega, and on a sidewalk. The first immediate challenge I encountered was unexpected snow on our bodega/sidewalk day. We had already arranged for holding inside of the bodega, but the crew shooting at the ATM around the corner would need a heat tent. So, I arranged for that remotely.

Additionally, I had to account for various safety risks - prop knives, a live dog, a sidewalk exterior, and some action on a fire escape. There is a lot of tedious work involved in detailing safety plans for NYU Risk Management, and my co-producers were heavily committed to other projects, so I prioritized and delegated as best I could in order to gain COIs in time for checkouts.

On the day before checkouts, my Murphy’s Law sense started tingling, and I decided to call Budget to make sure that our truck reservation, which had been booked weeks in advance, was still set. I found out that a stranger had used my name to pick it up a few days prior - by some glitch in the system - and Budget no longer had a reservation on file for me. With one remaining hour in the business day, I had to find a truck rental company that accepted NYU’s insurance and had the size truck we needed.

My biggest takeaways from this production were time management and remote problem-solving. Passing the wand and being absent for physical production was tough, but it was a milestone on my journey to becoming a professional producer.

CHALLENGES & TAKEAWAYS

Spring semester sophomore year, this was my first thesis film production. Kara Bartek took me under her wing again (we had previously teamed up on Oh Yeah) to co-produce this eerie AI drama on an AirBnb farm in northern Connecticut.

This was a 6-day shoot, bookended by 2 travel days. We were immediately struck by unexpected challenges. Firstly, our DP broke his leg the day before checkouts. Then, on the morning of our first shoot day, we awoke to a foot of snow. The ACs had to compensate for the DP’s lack of mobility, and we had to be extra aware of the icy surfaces, stalling his next hospital visit to the best of our ability.

It was extremely cold in the barn that we shot much of the film in. This affected the crew’s efficiency. G&E had to account for the electrical challenges of working in snow. The cold caused our prop glass to fail. We quickly fell behind schedule. By day 4, we were looking at a compromise that involved cramming an entire day and a half into our final shoot day.

These schedule compromises culminated in the core braintrust - the director, the producers, the A.D., the sound mixer, and the director’s roommate - working through lunch on day 6 to prep the final exterior scene. Pure grit and a will to beat the sunset drove us to spend our 30 minute break digging a grave in the frozen ground while everyone else was inside eating fish and chips.

Scheduling was undoubtedly the biggest challenge on this project. NYU requires 1 break day for shoots longer than 6 days, and we couldn’t afford to stretch the budget any thinner, and we couldn’t ask the unpaid student crew to scrap it in close quarters for longer than 6 days. We had to make the film in 6 days. I learned to trust the A.D.’s scheduling calls.

My biggest takeaways from this project were practical weather-proofing knowledge, familiarity with the budget needs of a travel shoot, and the importance of keeping your crew comfortable. I also became very confident in asking businesses for discounts and donations. Most of our meals were discounted. We’ll have a lot of special thanks to put in the end credits.