Project: Working with the Producer

As director, I am expected to work closely with the producer of the film - as she is the one who will be enabling the realisation of my vision. Today, Lauren and I had a long meeting together in which we discussed in detail the pre-production of the film. The idea was to give Lauren an idea of everything I wanted for the film, with the main topics being Actresses, Locations, Costume and Props. 

When we discussed the actresses, we found we had very little to talk about. This is mainly because Lauren had helped me to create the character sheets that I used as inspiration for the script, so she effectively already knew exactly what kind of performance I was looking for. Lauren informed me that she had arranged for us to visit a child's acting class in Chesterfield in order to scout a potential actress to play the lead role of Libby, which left us to try and find actresses to play the mother and grandmother roles. We contacted several individuals and organisations and we are currently awaiting response.

For the locations, I described in detail the various settings of the film. However, we soon realised that these locations were based on my actual home, and so we decided that if Lauren could not find anywhere suitable we would use my house. This left us to find a supermarket for the final scene, and so we contacted many local supermarkets and are currently awaiting response.

For costume, I simply ran through what I envisioned each character to wear in each scene, and Lauren made notes. She and I will go shopping for costumes later using these notes as a reference.

The notes Lauren made of my ideas for costumes

The same applied for props, and Lauren and I will shop for props in a similar fashion.

The notes Lauren made of my ideas for props

I am enjoying working with Lauren very much. We are good friends and I find working with her to be very easy. I have absolutely no criticisms of our working relationship, and I hope that in the future I can recapture a dynamic director-producer relationship like this one with someone who I do not know quite as well.