As the end of first year draws nearer, our first (important) film is coming in production. I have had the opportunity to work as a producer for one of the films, 'Two Seconds', and day one of two is complete. After two weeks of everything running smoothly, we began to see some cracks in the production which we came and saw and conquered.

• Days before the shoot, the agency supplying us with 7 extras decided to smoothly 'dingy' us by not replying to emails or picking up the phone. For a so-called casting agency, I thought this was disrespectful, just plain rude and extremely unprofessional. However, we contacted another agency 'All Talent UK' who promptly got on to it and we had our extras within hours.
  
• Sound. Sound, sound, sound. As we are all completely clueless with this, we had the trouble of having to find a sound person days before the shoot. In the end we had to ask Michael, our editor, to do sound for us today and Gav to do sound for us tomorrow. H-O-W-E-V-E-R. Today, halfway through the shoot, we suddenly realize the sound has not been switched on or some strange thing that basically meant we were screwed. We took a break, ate some food or a million cookies, and popped some caps. I had the lovely job of making sure we didn't run a second over schedule which was hard, as even though we want to get the best shots and performance possible, time was of the essence and its hard not to feel like your sucking all the creative energy out of the film, however the show must go on! In the end, we managed to complete the scenes and re-shoot, all in the nick of time, along with taking down sets and what not. It was a good experience and I'm sure we'll never make that mistake again.
• The battery charger broke. Which meant, of course, the monitor died. We could live with this, however the cameras death swiftly followed, luckily we were aware of it and managed to complete the shot list. We just had to miss out the voice over which wasn't major as it was only going to be a rough guide anyway and will get touched up in sound later.
• Carrying the kit up and down 7 flights of stairs was horrific, why oh why did the lift decide to break on the worst possible day? Bonus - I'm sure we'll all sleep well tonight.
  
• We handled obstacles well and have managed to stay calm in rubbish situations, can't hold us down!

These are of course the obstacles we faced, missing out all the good points. We have a lovely actress who played the part well and was great off-set too, and the costume was great! I think the make-up girl Rachel had a ball putting on all the chavy make-up. The footage looked great and I can't wait to see a complete copy, its a lot of fun and amazing how different it feels when its your own project your working on. Its obviously more personal and your efforts are far more invested in it. Having Ally from 4th year was a massive help, I think he made us feel safer as he had more knowledge and experience and we really appreciated his help.
Producing is fun - but stressful. Its a lot of work and its amazing to see how much a producer actually has to do for a film. I find the budgets and shot lists hard to follow because of having dyscalculia, but hopefully it will get better from now on with a little help. In general, day one had been good fun and I don't think there's anything too awful that could happen tomorrow. I'll report back soon with the verdict!