The most productive day of Soul Searchin‘ for a very long time. I called a meeting for the crew at The Courtyard this evening. Alongside Beacon veterans Simon Wyndham and Max Van De Banks were art director Jenni Gregory, camera assistant Tyler Winters, runner/production assistant Lex Collicott and Cat Whiteaway, whose role as production assistant became more and more like production manager as the evening went on. This all makes a big difference to The Beacon, where I didn’t give anyone any responsibilities until the shoot actually started – struggling through the organisation of everything from props to locations myself whilst also trying to prepare for the film as a director – and subsequently found myself with a lot of people hanging around on set who didn’t really know what they were supposed to do.

This time around, Jenni’s handling all the props and costumes, and Cat and Lex are sorting out the locations, freeing me up enormously to concentrate on storyboarding, planning lighting set-ups and rehearsing actors. The production staff even offered to try to raise funding.

After the meeting proper I went through the script with Jenni, sorting out which props I could provide myself, and noting a few changes in requirements due to redrafting. Fortunately her department is going to need negligible funds, except of course for the costumes and props which need to be made. I plan to find an art college student or two to help out with this. The news from Max’s make-up quarter was also good, and he was undaunted by the complexity of the demon concept designs which I showed him.

Filmmaking has its ups and downs. Today was a definite up.