Pre-Production

When this column began, the one direct question in the comments came from a reader in Britain assembling a first feature, a psychological thriller, who wanted to know how such a thing is packaged. The honest answer is not a list of documents. It is a sequence. Most first features that die in prep die of getting it wrong, almost always by choosing the actors before everything that should have come first. The ones that survive walk the dull road below, and nobody who has walked it calls it inspiring. ...

I rarely write about tools, and never with much pleasure. Software is the fastest-aging subject in this métier, the vendors redo their pricing pages the way the rest of us change socks, and no shoot I have ever stood on was saved by a subscription. The first stripboard I worked from was cardboard in a wooden holder, and it ran a feature perfectly well. Tant pis: the paperwork is part of the process whether I enjoy it or not, these four names keep arriving in my comments, and I have watched too many young producers choose their software the way they would never dare choose a lens, by reading the side of the box. The boxes will not help you here, since all four print the same list on them, and a feature list has never once predicted which tool survives contact with a shooting day. What predicts it is the shape of your production, because a one-day commercial and a twelve-day feature fall apart in entirely different places. So the shape is how I will compare them. ...