Life is tricky. It requires negotiation and fearless navigation. The bills are due, the house needs work, and the kids need your attention. We seem to do all this at the expense of our dreams. I believe the SECRET is BALANCE.

Stephen Covey talks about this in his great book, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. How Dr. Covey sums this up is by breaking our life down into 4 quadrants:

1. Urgent & Important
2. Not Urgent & Important
3. Urgent & Not Important
4. Not Urgent & Not Important

Quadrant 1 is basically about putting out fires… this causes stress, burnout and did I mention stress?

Quadrant 2 – We’ll come back to that…

Quadrant 3 – The urgent and unimportant is all about interruptions like phone calls and email. We get stuck here and it makes Q1′s stuff more urgent and more stressful…

Quadrant 4 – is where we go  hide when we are feeling overwhelmed… Ultimately causing more stress (from Q1) and setting us up for failure.

Back to Q2

Quadrant 2 is where we want to spend the majority of time. This is where balance happens. We get our work done, make great connections and relationships and do the things that nurture us (and our soul).

Quadrant 1 is the killer. When we spend all of our time fighting fires… we have no time for much else. Then we burnout – go hide in Q4. This results in more fires to put out – leading to more stress… the cycle begins again.

There will always be Q1 things that come up but if we spend the time focusing on the long term and balancing our life – making sure to include time for the good things our quality of life skyrockets!

This is where dreams come true… By removing ourselves from the stranglehold of the urgent and important – fireproofing instead of fighting fires… we suddenly gain time and perspective.

When we slow down – moving away from the urgent we have time to go out for a hike, take singing or piano lessons, travel, be truly in love…

Sounds like a good idea for me.

Slow down and breathe…

If we are effective in our Pre-production stage (I like to call it the “organization” stage) most of our production questions will be answered well ahead of time. So, how do we accomplish this?

• Thorough script or storyboard breakdown – This means actors, locations, art department, wardrobe, make-up, picture cars, SFX, and special equipment.
• Casting & Actor availability
• Location scouting and location availability
• Then scheduling (the 2 biggest puzzle pieces to figure out are actor and location availability)
• Hiring Crew – Your crew needs become very clear after your breakdown and schedule are done. You don’t need a technocrane technician if you realize that you don’t need a technocrane (or vise versa).
• Good question to ask now. . . Is this in the budget?
• Tech Scout – This gives your crew (and you) a chance to refine crew and equipment needs BEFORE you get on set!
• Production Meeting – The final opportunity before shooting to recognize any potential problems and address them.

A good (organized) prep leads to a fun shoot. Shooting should be fun! Anyone who insists otherwise needs a new career. Sure there is high pressure (come on, I’m an AD), but for me, that’s when my job gets exciting. There are constantly things that pop up that can effect your shooting schedule (actors being late, equipment malfunction, rain (Oh the dreaded rain) but if you had an effective prep, you should be ready and able to respond.

This leads me to another pitfall of a poor prep: Long shooting days. I was on a job once (I was a few years younger) that shot 5 days. 3 of the 5 were 20 hours or longer (Day 5 was 24 hours). This is not only stupid, it is illegal. Forget about legality for a minute and think about crew productivity for a minute. The realm of universal law that you enter on a shooting day of 16+ hours in the Law of Diminishing Returns. There are a couple of legit reasons why a shooting company goes long. If there is a technical problem, or various delays (weather etc.), I see only 2 reasons why you stay until you finish the day:

• Location Availability
  Actor Availability

If you can’t shoot another day at the location for a longer than exceptable time (If your shooting and the location isn’t available again for 2 weeks) or an actor isn’t available another day.

In most instances when a productions runs long hours, what happened is they (pick your they) overscheduled or simply created an unrealistic schedule. Often times a job is accepted, a contract signed (commercials, Music Videos) when there simply isn’t the money in the budget to provide what is promised they right way. Anyone bidding a job should be experienced enough to see this and renegotiate before accepting the job. Anyone who doesn’t is irresponsible at best. I understand the need to “get the job”. Learn better negotiation skills. . .

Everyone has shot with an over ambitious shooting schedule. A good prep can organize this in a way so that it is efficient and completed on time.

Tragedy can strike as a DIRECT result of these long hours. There are numerous stories of crew members involved in accidents as a result of fatigue. And I know a PA, who after working 20 hours, and getting only 4 hours rest and then returning to work, suffered a seizure (the 1st of his life) and collapsed unconscious for 20 minutes. His neurologist says the episode was a result of fatigue.

A lot of these reasons for shooting 16+ hour days can be alleviated with a good prep. Important? YES!

Good organization in prep, back up plans and a solid strategy are ways to foresee almost any scenario.

Begin with the end in mind.