5

The Production Office

Now that you have broken down your script, determined a budget for your production, and have started to put your key players together, you need to have a base of operations. That base is the production office. The production office is the hub of communication and operations during pre-production and a source of support during production. Setting up and running a production may seem daunting with all that needs to be done but, if organized well, can result in a smooth-running office.

Production Office Considerations

There are two kinds of production offices. One may exist wherever your production company is located. If you are shooting in the same vicinity/city as your production company, this office will remain your base of operations. The second office is the one you may need on location. If you are shooting at a distant location from where your production company is, then you need to set up a temporary production office. This chapter will deal with this kind of office. A temporary production office on location is mainly used for feature films. You may still need a small production office area if you are working in documentary or producing live events. These types of productions may not need as many offices or services, but the concept is still the same. You need a place to operate from.

Either the producer or UPM determines the location of the office. First, he determines exactly in what city the film will be shooting. Once that is decided, the UPM will research different hotels. Hotels are one of the best choices for your production office because you can also house your crew in the hotel, diminishing the need to transport your crew around the city. Not just any hotel will do. Following is a list of services and amenities that are needed in a hotel to house a production coming into town for an extended period of time (anywhere from one month to a year!).

Blocks of Rooms

The hotel must be able to set aside blocks of rooms that will accommodate your crew size. Having blocks assures that you’ll be able to get a room at any time. Remember, not all of your crew will be arriving at your location at the same time. As crew and actors arrive in pre-production, and as others arrive during production, you need the ability to secure their hotel rooms.

Ample Office Space

Ample office space is imperative. One standard is that almost all of your key personnel get their own offices. You can count on an additional five to six offices for other personnel. The point here is to make sure you have enough offices within one office space so that your crew has ample space in which to work.

Proximity to Restaurants and Shops

Because working in a production office, especially in pre-production, leaves little time for taking lunch, most people eat and work at their desks. Having restaurants close by for either delivery or pickup makes sense.

Proximity to Airport

Since you will be transporting cast, crew, some equipment, and possibly dailies to and from the airport, it is better to be close to an airport. This may not always be possible, depending on where you are shooting and where your main sets/locations are, but try not to be too far from the airport.

Room Service

You will find that your shooting days can range from all-day to all-night. Sometimes your crew may finish at four o’clock in the morning. Having twenty-four-hour room service so the crew can get a bite to eat after a long day’s shooting is important. It is also important for any days off, when crew members who do not have their own transportation need to eat. Obviously, a good restaurant or two inside the hotel is also preferable.

Nicer Rooms for Stars

Most of your crew is fine staying in a standard hotel room. However, some actors may require more upscale lodging. Often hotels have larger rooms, suites, or even presidential suites that can accommodate this need. Your director, director of photography, and/or production designer may also require nicer hotel rooms. The determination of who gets what kind of room may be generated by the producer, by an actor or crew’s request, or may even be contractual. The key is to make sure that the proper type of room is communicated to your APOC, who will be booking the rooms.

Refrigerators

This is a nice item for crew and cast, who’d rather not have to leave their rooms every time they want a drink or snack. If the hotel does not provide these, you can often make a deal with the hotel to bring in small refrigerators from a rental company. It is your decision whether you want to pay for them or have individual crew and cast who want them order and pay for their own.

Parking

On a location shoot you need several kinds of parking. There’s parking for production vehicles (this is covered in Chapter 16), crew, cast, and visitors. Some of your crew may be hired locally, meaning that they live in the city where you are shooting. Local crew, since they most likely have their own transportation, will need a place to park when they come into the office. Some of your distant crew need and should be provided with rental vehicles. They will need parking near the office. Sometimes hotels have ample parking right at the building. However, if your hotel is in a downtown area, you may need to rent spaces in a parking structure.

Proximity to Locations

Ideally, your hotel/production office would be close to your locations. This cuts down on travel time to the set for crew and cast. Again, this may not always be possible when shooting in remote or exotic locations, but it is ideal.

Laundry Service

Just about all hotels have laundry service, and everyone knows how expensive it can be. Hire a local laundry service to come to your office twice a week to pick up and deliver laundry. The laundries can give you bags to disburse to the crew. Usually the crew will turn over their laundry, labeled, to the receptionist, who will later turn it over to the laundry service and then disburse it when it comes back.

Free Wi-Fi

Surprisingly some hotels still do not have free Wi-Fi for all their guests. This is very important for film people who constantly are trying to make connections, checking email and social media daily.

Setting Up the Office

Once the office is located, the next step is setting it up, making it a workable space specific to production. The first step is to assign offices to specific departments or crew. The higher the budget, the more offices and personnel you will have. Lower-budget projects may not be able to afford any office space. This is where the producer needs to be creative. Making a film or show without a base of operations will only lead to disorganization, miscommunication, and a lack of cohesiveness for the crew. If expense is a concern, a single hotel room can double as a production office. This is common in field shooting where small crews of two to three people are in a location for only a short time.

Assigning Offices

Certain personnel have the biggest, nicest offices. These are the producer, director, UPM, production supervisor, and VIPs. The VIP office is reserved for important visitors such as the executive producer or occasional studio executive. The POC and APOC usually get the biggest space in a central area because they are the hub of coordination and information for the crew.

The following also need offices: locations, the assistant directors, production designer, director of photography, art director, props, wardrobe, accounting (two), editors (if on location with you), transportation coordinator and captain, grip and electric, and sometimes extras casting. If you are casting extras at the production office, it is wise to place this office outside and away from the other offices. This way you avoid the occasional nosy extra who wants to get his script to the producer.

Other rooms are needed for various situations, such as a room to watch dailies, and a break room with coffee, refrigerator, and so forth. The main entrance area should be reserved with a space for the receptionist to screen people and answer phones.

Making the Office Operational

Making the office operational involves ordering the following services and equipment:

• Telephones: You will definitely need multiline phones, preferably with seven to eight incoming lines. These phones should be set up with extension numbers, conference calling, speaker phones, long-distance service, and automatic redial. The process is to set up an account with a local telephone company: the company can provide the telephones as well as the service. Some hotels already have phones in these spaces, and you need only to set up the service. The APOC assigns and keeps a record of extension assignments and makes sure this list is distributed to all offices.
• Office equipment: The following standard office equipment is needed in your production office: two copiers (one for general use and one for private use in the accounting office) that can do multiple documents all at once, a fax machine, an answering machine, coffee/cappuccino makers, a refrigerator, a microwave, and a water cooler. You must also outfit the office with the following: office furniture, desks, chairs, and bookcases. You may also need a couple of monitors and DVD players for the viewing room.
• Local services: There are many different kinds of local services that need to be available to your crew. These services may be for their personal use or to support their work on the production. These include art supply stores, car rentals, banks, bookstores, cab services, a cake shop for special occasions, a card shop, caterers, a chiropractor, copy places, local hospitals and medical doctors, dry cleaners, florists, grocery stores, health food stores, beauty shops, drug and liquor stores, a notary, police, and a post office.
• Couriers: There are many kinds of couriers used on a production, because productions tend to have heavy shipping loads. You may be sending scripts to cast and crew, and sending equipment back and forth, just to name a couple. You need to set up an account with an international/national overnight courier service such as FedEx, Airborne Express, or UPS. Most of these companies will give you a discount because of the large volume of shipping that will take place.
• Projection: Depending on how you intend to view dailies, you may need to arrange for a projector to be brought in (not done too much anymore, but still done). If you are watching dailies on 35mm film, you will need a 35mm projector. These projectors are large and require at least a day to set up. Certain companies will fly the projector to you, along with a person to set it up. At the end of the shoot, the person will return to tear the projector down and take it back to the company.
  
  If you plan to watch your dailies digitally, you can either have the dailies projected or watch them on a monitor. Check with your director and DP to see which they prefer. Many productions are also watching their dailies online.
• Security: Sometimes productions will hire a private firm to provide security for the production office and set. Security may be needed if you have well-known talent and your production has been publicized in the local press.
• Crew packets: Crew packets are packages of information for arriving cast and crew that contain the following: contact list, crew list, new script pages (if any), hotel information, new memos (if any), film commission information, and brochures and recreational information about the city. Once you create a sample packet, have your PAs put together enough for every distant cast and crew member. When crew or cast comes into town, the drivers from the transportation department should give them a packet. You can also leave it in the person’s hotel room.
• Production files: Production files are a comprehensive set of files kept by the POC in the production office. These files are the paper version, with original signatures of paperwork such as the call sheets, production reports, crew deal memos, cast contracts. These files also include all the cast lists, crew lists, location lists, and so forth. Most POCs will keep all versions of a document, which is good practice. All of this paperwork is also scanned and kept electronically. At the end of a project these are turned over to the producer.
• The wall of envelopes: Because of the large number of people working in a temporary situation, there needs to be an easy way to distribute paperwork to the cast and crew. Generally, all paperwork for cast is given to them individually. Because crews can be quite large, a more efficient form of distribution is used. You can create a wall of envelopes for this distribution. There first needs to be a wall in the production office large enough to hold anywhere from fifteen to more than thirty large manila envelopes (the 8½" × 11" size), depending on the size of your crew. You then cut out the front portion of the envelope so that paperwork can be easily inserted and removed. Next, you need to place labels on all the envelopes, with the name of the person or department. Some crew members get their own envelopes; some envelopes are for an entire department. For instance, the DP will get his or her own envelope. However, the grip department can have just one envelope. Be sure to know how many people are in a particular department so that enough copies are distributed to everyone.
  
  An alternative to using the wall of envelopes on a production is using email. Some people in the production office may prefer email. More than likely, you will need to do a combination of paper and electronic distribution.

Running the Production Office

The POC or APOC opens or closes the office daily. The office should be opened at least a half hour before call time. Following is a list of various events that will take place throughout the day in the office:

• The APOC types the previous day’s production report, gets it approved, and distributes it. The production report is distributed to the 1st AD, UPM, producer, completion bond company, insurance company, and studio executives (if any).
• A daily lunch run is conducted for all office crew. Rarely do all office crew have the time to go out to lunch.
• The APOC receives the first shot call. This will come from the 2nd AD, on set, when the first shot is achieved. The APOC then notifies the POC, UPM, and producer. The APOC also receives calls when the crew breaks for lunch, when they get the first shot after lunch, and when the crew wraps, which are also passed on to the POC, UPM, and producer.
• The POC troubleshoots. This may involve calls from set; for example, maybe someone forgot to bring along something she needs on set (this is common during the first several days of shooting).
• POC and APOC work on revising any paperwork, on travel, and on correspondence to the studio.
• The office receives and makes sure dailies will be ready for viewing. After the shooting day is over, the crew will return to the production office for various reasons. You can have the PAs post a sign with the time for dailies. The editors will then prepare the dailies.
• The wrap sheet is completed and distributed to the UPM and producer. See Figure 5.1.

Figure 5.1 Daily wrap sheet

Keeping It Running Smoothly

Once you have all the above measures in place, you would think the office could just run itself, but not so. For a production office to run smoothly, a lot more needs to be considered. For instance, the quality of the support team. Hiring great office PAs is crucial. There are a thousand details you will attend to each day, and you can’t be mired down by updating crew lists and distribution logs. The number one quality of anyone in a production office is resourcefulness. Production can throw a million different problems at you, and it’s up to you and your team to figure out a solution. The crew needs to feel they can come to the office with any problem and get help. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never hired a snowmaker before. Make some calls; get it done. Finally, the morale of the production office is also important. If your team members stress out during busy times, whine in down times, or just plain don’t get along, it will affect the crew. Handle conflicts as soon as they arise, and help people who have stress issues. If the production office runs smoothly, the crew and the producer will be appreciative (which ultimately leads to more jobs!).

The Meet-and-Greet

The meet-and-greet is a party given immediately before the beginning of principal photography. The purpose of the party is for crew and cast to meet one another before working together on set. The POC or APOC coordinates this party, arranging for a venue, usually a restaurant. He or she also informs all cast and crew of the time and location. The meet-and-greet may be paid for by the producer or may be part of the production budget. You will most likely not have a meet-and-greet on lower-budget films, merely because you cannot afford it.

The Wrap Party

The wrap party is the event that marks the finishing of principal photography. It is usually held on or immediately after the last day of shooting. In low budget, the party may simply be on set with some light refreshments. On a higher-budget production, the party may be at an expensive restaurant with a full gourmet meal and a band. Sometimes the party will simply be a time when everyone gets together and discusses how tired they are. Sometimes the party has a little more structure. The director or producer may wish to make a short speech, thanking the cast and crew for their hard work. Some wrap parties may feature projection of behind-the-scenes footage for the cast and crew to enjoy. Since there is very little time on a set for socializing, the wrap party also serves as a networking opportunity for crew looking for their next job.

Wrapping Out the Production Office

Once principal photography is completed, the production enters a period called wrap. This is when the production office works on getting all cast, crew, and equipment back to their original places. All local accounts are closed out, and a final credit list is prepared. At this time the POC also prepares a final cast and crew list. The final crew list is distributed to the entire crew and is valuable to them for networking. Finally, the last person in the office, usually the APOC, makes sure the offices are left clean and in order, and that the hotel rooms are all left in good order.

Production Lists

A few lists are integral to the smooth running of a production office. The crew, contact, and cast lists provide all personnel with contact information (see Figures 5.2–5.4). These lists are created by the coordinators and distributed by the office PAs.

Figure 5.2 Example cast list

Figure 5.3 Example contact list

Figure 5.4 Example crew list

Summary

Setting up a production office involves first finding the right location with the right amount of space, one that can meet the specific needs of a production. The process is involved, including assigning offices and ordering a variety of furniture, equipment, and services. Production files must be set up. Crew packets need to be prepared for incoming crew. The meet-and-greet must be coordinated. Crew and cast begin to travel to and from the location. The “big” production meeting needs to be scheduled and coordinated. The production office becomes the essential hub of a project, where crew and cast find support and essential information.