Making A Web Series – Production

Production lasted 11 days spread over three months. We originally planned for nine days, but two things happened. One, it was ridiculous to think we could shoot the entire series in nine days. I don’t know what I was thinking. The 11 episodes came in at about 58 pages across multiple locations. I also hadn’t accounted for the “everything that can go wrong, will” factor of production. Scheduling lesson learned.

As it stands, we’re fortunate to have managed all 11 episodes in the 11 days. With exception of day one, we moved fast and always finished on schedule. We had a lot of outdoor shots in public locations so often times we moved fast by default. We weren’t able to set up any lights and couldn’t afford to get many takes before drawing attention to ourselves.

Spreading a shoot out over two months is difficult. We planned the first two weekends consecutively, but the remaining six days were mostly squeezed in when everyone’s schedules worked together. There were a few times where circumstances beyond our control caused us to lose an actor just days before shooting, having to scramble and reschedule what scenes we were shooting on any given weekend. It was also tough on our actors and continuity. We had to give a few haircuts and adjustments on the morning of some shoots. If nothing else, scheduling our next project will be a breeze after all the juggling we did for this one.

We made a few inevitable mistakes on day one. We chose to do one of the most difficult scenes first, one to get it out of the way, and two, because our first weekend was the only one where we had all of the actors available. As stated in my previous post, we lacked any kind of manpower when we needed it most on that day. Despite being only halfway through the scene, we wrapped early because it was either stop then or go three hours over on day one. I knew we could make up for it over the next two days. I like the idea of knocking out the tough scene early, but next time we’ll be more prepared to do so.

It wasn’t all stress and mistakes though. Having a small set makes it a fun environment. Everyone got to know each other and everything was very relaxed. The crew had great chemistry and everything ran smoothly. So long as I had my shot list ready to go for each day (and for the most part I did), there was little downtime. When we were “on set” rather than at the beach or park, we were able to really take our time and get some great footage.

When you’re on a microbudget project, the people are all you’ve got. Everyone there to help you is there for the love of making film and the learning experience. It’s important to remember that and really appreciate the great things done by our cast and crew. Datta, Violet, and I really wanted our set to be a fun and enjoyable one. Hopefully we achieved that.