The Last 7 Days is the most important part of Preproduction. Seven Days out from shooting is when most of the preproduction happens. Why is that? The simple answer is Deadlines. 
Deadlines force a filmmaker into action.
Sometimes a week out from shooting there seems to be an insurmountable amount of work to do. Sometime its 70% of preproduction. The big temptation for filmmakers, prone to procrastination, is to postpone the shoot.
Never do this. Always keep to the schedule and your deadlines.
The reason for this is that confidence from fellow cast and crew will evaporate, with each postponement. Also, you will get to the next scheduled shoot and find once again there is still a mountain of work to do. And then what? Do you postpone again.
Every postponement will lower confidence in the shoot.
Not only that, you will feel bad inside and start losing confidence in your own ability to pull off a film shoot. .So what should you do? Just get on with it. Seven Days out, make it happen.
If this is your first or second shoot and it is a 4 day shoot, it is a great idea to only have one day shoot on Weekend 1 This means you only have to organise one day of shooting initially. Once the first day happens, your confidence will explode and the rest of the shoot will happen smoothly. You can shoot 3 Days on Weekend Two.
Procrastinating a Shoot is usually a sign of fear.
Just get on with it and use our seven day out checklist on our Production film course found here.
Seven Days out, usually a filmmaking team finds the following
- They haver to finalise some of the locations
- They have to finalise some of the crew
- They have to book the Makeup artist
- They have to get Set Design and props organised.
- They have to finalise catering for the shoot days.
- They have to issue call sheets and check the schedule
- They have to have a Cast and Crew meeting.
- Location Reccies and Shot lists,
- And there is more. the list goes on.
The Seven day Checklist and how to do it, is Advanced Preproduction on our
Preproduction FIlm Course. It seems like a lot of work, but it is fun work. If you have a day job maybe take a couple of days off just before the shoot, so you can focus
100% on it. Seven Days out from any shoot takes work.
There is an old saying in Show Business. “It will be alright on the night” This means no matter how hard the rehearsal process is. everything somehow magically works out on the opening night of the show. The same is true for shoots. 7 Days out, get ready to Make your Film Happen. Once the shoot happens, you will feel fantastic.
If you would like to learn Filmmaking and make films or improve your skills , please check out our filmmaking courses here
