First job as DoP. Need advice.

[Analog_Addict]

Hello, after messing round with my Canon XL2 for a few months I have secured my first paid job as a DoP. The job is for a heritage company in the UK.

The basic outline is the film must take place at a specific heritage location, it must involve children from the local community. There will be a core crew of three, camera, sound and production manager.

Technically there is no limit on the length of the film and I assume it is for internet distribution in the end. I think the final product will be between 10-30mins long. We will get paid depending on the quality of the final product, which is fair since this is my first time working on something at a professional level.

How long should it take to shoot something like this and what would be a fair price to get paid if the end product is good? Bearing in mind we as a team, also have to write and edit the film.

Thanks.

 

[knightly]

With a standard formatted script in Celtx, we generally cover 2 pages a day with a crew of 10 or more (2 minutes of final screen time). 3 will take longer as you'll have to be multitasking and not working in parallel while setting up your shots.

Have EVERYTHING planned out to begin with: Location, Casting, Shot lists (every single shot you'll need to get the final edit done listed on paper as a check list to work through - the PM/AD will manage that list and your day).

The edit will take you between 1-2 weeks depending on the length of the finished piece and the thoroughness of your shot list.

For preproduction, I'd give yourselves at the bare minimum 2 months to arrange everything after you've done the first draft of the script - so you know what resources to start going after.

I've been making about $125/day to run camera when I'm doing a paid gig (I think USDollars and Euros are about equalish in value, with sterling being worth about US$2.75 last time I checked). I'm also not in California or New York where I'd be making more. For a 2-3 person crew, I could see about $500/day for the shoot, then an hourly wage for the edit - preproduction is up to you, but it's alot of work, the last 2 shows I produced were 10 minutes each and took me 3 months of 40 hour weeks to produce. You'll be able to do nothing else while producing them - although, you have access to the location, so that's a load off the plate

 

[Analog_Addict]

I had a feeling the workload would be extremely high. In all honesty though I would do it for free, how often does a reputable business give full responsibility to an unexperianced student?

I would be happy just to cover the cost of a second hand Rhode mic and boom.

Luckily I have friends that will be happy to work for peanuts if I need any extra help. Is it simply being too optimistic having a crew of 3 people? Ideally I want to shoot the entire thing within a month. Luckily everyone involved is either a student or only has a small part time job so we can all work on the project full time. For my first Uni film I edited a 10min short in three or four 9 hour editing days.

Thanks for some professional advice. No doubt as the ball gets rolling, questions will start flowing into this forum

Planning will commence in about a week. I will be creating a treatment, script and shot list. What other documents do you think it will be necessary to create? I do not take a production course at Uni so we only really touched upon the production planning stages.

Thanks again.

 

[knightly]

bring one or two storyboard sequences (nothing grand) to make sure you're on the same page w/ the client when leave.