2nd pre-production meeting

My opening pleasantry before any production meeting is “Thanks for coming”, which is always a good way to thank people for making the effort to attend in their own free time.

However yesterday there was genuine appreciation and awe for our producer Leilani, assistant producer Juliet, 1st AD Greer, 3rd AD Blair and production manager Katherine, who all made their way from various parts of London for our second pre-production meeting in Vauxhall last night. Granted, Vauxhall has not been one of the places which has been attacked by the morons so far, but nearby areas Clapham, Balham and Elephant & Castle had and the general opinion is that you never know where will be next, so I am very grateful for their commitment in doing so, as everyone around me seemed to be leaving work early and head home to avoid possible trouble.

The meeting was to catchup after last weeks initial get together when a lot of things were discussed and new members brought up to speed, so I felt we needed to sit down and work out who would be doing what and a few deadlines on when they needed to be achieved by. We went through a plan for locations and set a deadline for end of August to find them, discussed the logistics of the poster competition) which goes live on Friday and how to start to co-ordinate recces, camera tests and rehearsals as well as any further ideas on how to bring attention to our campaign.

I did question whether to have the meeting with such turmoil and fear around and it may have been more sensible to not as I am not jeopardizing my own safety but also four others but I trusted them all (and they were certainly under no pressure to attend) to make the right call for the journey they needed to take or make arrangements so they would not be in the eye of the storm. I deliberated all the way to getting the tube from Wembley Park whether to go ahead, rather than postpone until things calmed down as I certainly don’t think this film is more important than peoples safety.

However, one thing that kept hanging in my mind is that I didn’t want to let the idiots who are smashing shops and setting fires turn me into a hermit, afraid to continue with my normal life and as I got to Vauxhall that feeling was justified as everyone was like us, cracking on with their evening and we managed to get a little further down the road for “Clowning Around”.