Ep 64 How to overcome documentary production challenges: Troubleshooting Part 3.

In this weeks episode I'm sharing a few more troubleshooting tips.  How do you ensure you arrive at your destination with all your luggage, or at the least, enough gear to do the shoot?  Isolating smoke detectors and what if you can't travel?  

There are so many things that can go wrong when you're out and about filming for a documentary and these troubleshooting tips are to help you avoid some of the issues you can face. By hearing what has gone wrong on my shoots, you'll be equipped with some solutions that could help you in your own filmmaking.

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Transcript

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There is nothing worse than worrying about where your luggage is, especially when you're traveling to a location for work. And the luggage is your camera gear essential for that work. So you'll want to know it arrives at the destination with you. This is part three of a little series I'm doing on troubleshooting for documentary film production. And I'm telling you about this because I'm Sue Collins and I'm your host of the Moonshine Moonshot podcast on making movies that matter. And I'm part of the team behind Moonshine Agency, an Impact Film Production House, producing multi-award-winning films that have positive social impact. Impact films are films that are designed to take an audience from passive viewing to being an active participant. It gets them doing something, getting involved and being part of the solution. Now I've recognised that learning how to craft films is a challenging process. When I was just starting out, it was really hard to find information and learn about filmmaking without formal study or without being under the wing of a mentor. Avoiding the pitfalls, being pigeonholed, running out of funding, or simply not understanding the business side of the industry has meant that over the years I have seen many people with a lot of talent give up or simply move on to more stable work. So my hope is to see the industry thrive here in Australia and beyond, and I recognise that to do that, I have to be more open with my skills sharing. So I've decided to share what I have learned through many years of filmmaking through this podcast, Moonshine Moonshot, with online courses at the Moonshine Communications Academy. So make sure you check out the Academy, particularly the resource section, where you can access free downloads like check sheets and ebooks. And if you haven't come across them already, there are some great online courses available through the Academy, such as Define Your Ideal Audience, which helps you figure out who your project is best suited to well before you even roll camera, and that is gold for any film marketer. So back to today's troubleshooting. I've kicked off talking about luggage and how important it is for your luggage to come with you on the plane and arrive at the destination the same as you do. Because from the moment you check your luggage at the airport, frankly, it's a gamble as to whether it's actually going to meet you at the other end. And this issue is especially heightened since the pandemic. I recently had an issue with luggage in an overseas trip to the USA. Interstate travel is quite challenging in the US at the moment. So just getting to the US is a mega flight from Australia, but then I had two connections to get to my final destination. The problems travelers can face at the moment include things like really slow airport security, cancelled flights, and luggage issues. The situation that I found myself in with the team was that our luggage wasn't returned to us when our connecting flight was cancelled. And I mean, so we landed in Chicago. We'd just come off the long haul flight from Melbourne to San Francisco and then from San Francisco through to Chicago, and we had one more connection which was meant to take us through to Birmingham in Alabama. But that flight got cancelled at Chicago. There was dozens and dozens of cancelled flights, and the airport was in chaos. And the airline just simply said they would not be able to fly us out until the following Wednesday, which was five days away. Yeah, seriously. Not just that they wouldn't be able to fly us out, but they told us our luggage would in fact go on the next connecting flight to Birmingham, but we wouldn't be with it. So we were expected to be five days with nowhere to go and no luggage. I don't know how our luggage would just sit at Birmingham Airport for five days till we caught up with it, but that's what we were told. So you can imagine the nightmare scenario we found ourselves in because also we needed to be there to start work. So the immediate situation, we had packed a change of clothes each and we were able to get through a night in a hotel without too much stress. And the next day when we got to the airport to travel to our rerouted destination, which no was not Birmingham, Alabama, but an airport nearby where we hope to um hire a rental car to get us the final part of the distance to our final location. That is a whole another part to the story. And you should actually jump back to the last podcast, which was podcast 63, because you can hear the whole story there. But in this situation, speaking about the luggage, the saving grace was because we put air tags in our checked luggage. So when we got to the airport the next morning and discovered that our luggage was, in fact, also at the airport, and it appeared to be getting transported on the same flight as us heading to Atlanta. So when we arrived in Atlanta, we were able to track our bags through the air tags and discovered that they had in fact been route rerouted with us and they were not in Birmingham as as we were told, and we were able to go and collect our bags, and finally we were reunited. We were in the wrong place, but we had our bags with us. So the air tags were brilliant, and they really saved us on this one because we could have potentially jumped in a rental car, headed over the you know, three-hour drive to Birmingham and got to the airport there and discovered our bags in fact weren't there, but all the way back in Alabama. So there was, you know, these are just things that you'll learn as you travel. But air tags are amazing, highly recommend them, even just for your backpack. I mean, at least then if you put it down and it gets pinched, you kind of can track it in some regards. So, what would we have done had our luggage not arrived with us at our final destination? Well, this is where planning comes in, and it's saved us many times because we always carry the camera gear with us on the plane as hand luggage, not the tripods, that would be impossible because they're just too big. But we have the main camera gear in camera bags with us in the cabin. And this is the beauty of documentary cameras, um, the style of camera that you can use, because they can actually fit into suitable rolly bags, etc., that can go in as check luggage in the cabin. We're not having to use big pelican cases and you know, check our gear in um stowed luggage. So that is one thing I would absolutely recommend. Even even if you've just got one camera in your hand luggage, it means when you get to your final destination, if the tripod bag's gone missing, it's just not as hard to salvage a chute because you could most likely hire one tripod or purchase a new one if you really had to, or find some sort of workaround until you could solve the problem of not having a tripod. But not having a camera and not having sound gear, that's a lot trickier to improvise and way more expensive as well if you've got to try and hire or purchase that kind of gear, particularly camera gear, um, and camera gear that suits what you're using to produce your film with, because you know, that's a whole nother topic is about making sure that your cameras and your workflow and all of that stuff, which I did in a previous podcast, which you can jump back to. But let's just say not having a camera and sound gear is far harder to problem solve on location than simply not having a tripod. So, something else we sometimes do is take one of those really lightweight photography tripods with us in hand luggage, and it's not ideal and it is definitely doesn't work on a heavier camera because it's simply not sturdy enough. But if you've got something like a 5D, you can get away with a photography tripod and it can get you out of a jam. So it's worth considering having something like that in your hand luggage if it would work for your kit. But it's just one of those things. If you are traveling and you have to check your bags, try to make sure that whatever you carry with you as hand luggage can get you through at least 48 hours in case your bags do go missing. That's probably the best advice I can give you. Now, the next thing I want to talk to you about is what if you can't travel. Look, another problem is that you simply can't get to your destination. Maybe it's cost, maybe it's prior commitments, illness, or pandemics. And this became really problematic for us at Moonshine Agency during the pandemic because being from Australia and from Melbourne, we were one of the most locked-down countries and city in the world with some very significant border closures. We couldn't even travel interstate, and for Melbourne, we couldn't even travel outside the city limits. And at one point, we couldn't even leave our homes. So this is very problematic when you're trying to make a film. So one workaround we were able to employ was to hire filmers local to the locations we needed to be filming our stories in. And this was a really great solution for us, and it got us out of quite a few jams, and it can also be described as the way we pivoted. Is anyone else getting PTSD just simply hearing the word pivot? I am so sick of the word pivot, but that is what we did. We pivoted, and that's what led us to hire crews in locations that we couldn't travel to. And it was actually a really good option, and we made some fantastic connections all around the world with um some fabulous filmers. So it was a really good networking thing for us as well. You could also do this, like hire local filmers if you need pickups. So, say you've done an overseas shoot and you need something else that you couldn't get at the time. Maybe your participant was sick and couldn't come to an interview or something like that, and you just can't get back there because it's just time or money you don't have. You could hire a local film crew to go and do that interview for you. And you know, you can FaceTime in as the director, you can do all kinds of things. So there's definitely ways you can get around the not being able to travel scenarios. So highly recommend that as another troubleshooting thing. Now, this one's this next one, isolate your smoke detectors. Look, this one's a bit of a funny one, and it's probably rarely ever going to come up for you in your career, but you'll be surprised. And this is some of the best advice I can give to filmmakers who are doing anything on a location where they're going to be using smoke. So think smoke machines for special effects, think you know, people smoking or using pretend cigarettes, anything that could set off a fire alarm. Whatever you're doing with smoke, if it's in a building where there is a built-in smoke detector, you must request for them to isolate it for the period of time when you are filming. And I I know this probably seems so random, but yeah, I've actually heard of this happening too many times. And Mike, my um co-producer and partner in all things, learned about this the very hard way on shoots. And I can I just point say I did tell him to isolate the smoke detectors on this shoot. I wasn't involved in it, and they didn't do it. And he was filming a scene in a uh no longer in-use jail, and the actor who was playing an inmate set off a flare, which of course set off the fire alarm. And five minutes later, there was around five police vehicles and a number of fire engines on site, and a rather hefty bill for their time, all of which could have been avoided if the smoke detectors had been isolated. So you can hear Mike's recount of this story on the YouTube version of this episode number 64 over at the Moonshine Moonshot YouTube channel, which is the Moonshine Communications Academy YouTube channel. But the long and the short of this is really look, everything to do with troubleshooting, all three parts of this little mini-series. The long and short of it really is that if it can go wrong, it probably will go wrong at some point. And the best thing you can do on a shoot is just figure it out. Work through the problem, find a solution, and just know that the next time you'll know how to fix that problem. Or you can avoid it happening in the first place. So, you know, air tags, isolating smoke detectors, these are all things you learn from experience. So don't stress about problems happening. Part of the fun is film in filmmaking is that you can do it. You can get through all of the dramas and all of the things you need to do to get your film made. There is bound to be another filmmaker who has gone through the problem that you're facing. So just hang in there. You might even find the solution by Googling the problem that you're having. You're gonna be okay. And you know what? Next week, I am gonna come back and talk all about the elusive work life balance. You know that balance that actually doesn't even exist. And I honestly don't even know why everyone talks about it like there's a solution, because I don't actually think anyone solved it. But I am back next week to talk to you about it and give you my thoughts on how you can troubleshoot the work-life balance conundrum. So don't miss another installment of the Moonshine Moonshot Podcast. Hit subscribe on whatever platform you're on. Leave me comments, and I will be back next week to talk to you more about documentary filmmaking. So until then, have a great time filmmaking, and I'll speak to you soon!