TV Commercial Production Scheduling
- Posted on 15th November 2017
- in Entertainment, entertainment books, Film Production, film production book, Production Management, TV Commercial Production
- by Ben
I’ve posted before about working with Ken Licata on his TV commercial production for the Italian product, Brooklyn Gum. The first time we did this was at a different production company with a seriously incompetent producer. This second batch was with the support of Iris Films and the brilliant Ellen Rappaport, a first-class producer so it was easier from the start. (The full story of this production is in Circumstances Beyond My Control.)
The principles of scheduling are the same for any sort of shoot yet the tools are different. On a feature the First Assistant Director has a script that he or she has broken down and a notebook of scene descriptive pages and a strip board. Detailed discussion of these tools is for another post. With a TV commercial production one works only with a story-board and a script. Most commercials are one or two day shoots and scheduling is a no-brainer.
For this job we had twenty-seven vignettes – each of which was at a different location around the NYC metro area – to shoot in nine days. We were on a fixed budget and we had ninety-five crew hours, an average of ten and a half hours a day. There were no weather days, we had to shoot every day rain or shine.
Scheduling this shoot was not a no-brainer.
Fortunately I had my first string Production Assistant crew: Betsy Reid, Peter Repplier, Mike Garvey and Ken Licata, Jr. Ellen brought me in for five or six days of preproduction.
The most important element the 1st AD has to work with for this kind of a schedule is knowledge of the proclivities of the director and the director of photography. Since I had worked with Ken Licata on many shoots for several years as both his producer and AD (and he was his own DP) I knew my man. Most of the other directors I worked with would never have been able to pull off this shoot with the limitations we had. Ken never did unnecessary extra takes, he knew when he had his shot and moved on.
Author Ben Bryant goofing on Brooklyn Gum shoot
On Monday 4 May (1981) I began scheduling the shoot. All together we had over 150 performers including a high school band, a college football team, a dozen showgirls, an aerobics class, a team of cheerleaders, several horses and a chimpanzee. In addition to this sizable cast there were over twenty picture vehicles including a stagecoach and an eighteen wheel semi truck. We had to average three locations a day and several required substantial travel time. Eight were in New Jersey, three in Brooklyn (including on the bridge) two on Staten Island and the rest all over Manhattan. For five consecutive days all I did was write and rewrite the schedule.
Every afternoon around 4:00 Ellen, the PAs and I had a meeting. We would all pick apart the schedule and the next day I’d rewrite it and we’d have another meeting. By Friday we had a schedule that worked.
It was very detailed: Arrive at location; time. First shot; time. Wrap and Depart location; time. Arrive at second location; time etc. for nine days. We printed a copy for all the production department and the heads of all the other crew departments.
I carried a copy of the shooting schedule in my pocket and noted the actual times of each entry. Except for the day in pouring rain we were never off by more than twenty minutes for the entire shoot.
Day 4 Brooklyn Gum Schedule
I’m still proud of this job and of the best production team I ever worked with: Ellen Rappaport, Betsy Reid, Peter Repplier, Mike Garvey and Ken Licata, Jr. Thanks, guys.
This and many other sagas of TV commercial Production will be found in Circumstances Beyond My Control.
Tags: Betsy Reid, Brooklyn Gum, Ellen Rappaport, Ken Licata, Ken Licata Jr., Perer Repplier
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