Wednesday, February 9, 2011

More on Scheduling

Scheduling shoots, edits and other production is always a bit tricky.  You want to keep schedules tight so as to get the most bang for your buck and actually stand a chance of earning a living in this world of $1.99 rentals and 2 tenths of a cent per view, but you also need to leave some flexibility for life's little surprises.

I went ahead and scheduled most of my shows to "air" on Wednesdays.  This is so I can keep bringing the internet the "Weird World of HFP" on a schedule and still make that schedule happen in one of several ways.  I can edit the show over the weekend if I have time, which lately it seems I don't.  I can also edit the show on Tuesday while Nancy is at work, which usually works great.  Finally, what I'll be doing today, I can edit and post it on Wednesday morning and afternoon and have it online in time for a Wednesday evening showing.  This can go wrong if there are server problems, which there often are.  I have a backlog of audio recordings and some photos ready to go, so the putting together of the show shouldn't be too much trouble.

Back up problem, I also have client work due tomorrow, which I'll be finishing up FIRST today (it's loading while I write this).  All of this would be fine if my regular life had stayed the same.  I generally take the middle of the week as my office week.  Build stuff up Monday and Tuesday, edit, phone calls and set up meetings Wednesday, meetings Thursday and Friday. clean up on the weekends if I have to and back to the cycle.

The problem comes in when you have so much work (and this a good problem to have) that your wiggle room is gone.  Normally today I would have a few hours of work and no social obligations.  Instead I have about 6 hours of edit work, a few hours of posting, some office work (most of that is done already) and a bit of shooting planned for later to stockpile shows for March because I'll be losing Wednesdays to the production of "File Error" for a couple of weeks.

Scheduling shows weekly to keep an audience is one thing.  I can always post one early, so long as it's there when people look for it, but production is another story.  Clients tend to actually want stuff early.  I give "real" dates.  The date I actually expect something to be done, not an early date I'll never hit to make them happy or a late date I won't need to make my life easier.  It might be a bit late to allow for things that crop up, but I do my best to give an actual date and then I hit that date.  Shooting a movie has to be scheduled to the hour.  The minute if possible.  Crossing 12 people's schedules is not easy and doing it when you can't pay them to take off from day jobs and need to finish on time because when the food budget runs out you're working with nothing tends to keep things a bit tight.  "File Error" is a revisit for me to the "weekend" movie, where we'll be shooting over several weeks to fit it into the schedules of the actors rather pumping the movie out in 4 or 5 days to get it done so I can move on to other stuff.  It has a lot of interiors, so unlike "Alien Vengeance" I don't have to worry about the seasons giving me away if it takes awhile to shoot.

In the end, it all comes down to planning and adding about 20% to any expected scenario.  You don't want to be left at the end cutting corners because you didn't schedule enough time, but you don't want to turn down outside work because you gave a production too much time.  What usually happens is the oil change on the car, some lawn work and pressure washing the driveway get put off because everyday life is where your wiggle room comes from.  Heck, I'm even behind on watching bad movies to review for the "Cheesey Movie Reviews"  <---yes, "cheesey" is mispelt, that's cheesy, don't ya think?

OK, gotta' go.  Running over schedule on today's blog.  I'll let you know how it all turns out tomorrow.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the reprieve you may get should a client push a date back for you.  I can start work on the show about 90 minutes sooner now, so that means I can eat lunch today.  Make it even.

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