After contending with a forest fire, a month's delay, and so many planning challenges, we finally arrived at day 1 of principal photography for my feature film Wild Boys.

Back in Newsletter #19 you and I talked about the importance of getting day 1 right to set up the rest of your production for success.

Today I want to show you how we used those principles on the first day of shooting Wild Boys.

We’ll talk about:

• why I prefer snowballs over eating frogs
• how we planned our first day
• what we actually got done
• how you can use these principles in your production

Let’s roll.

Snowballs are better than eating frogs

Have you ever heard the term “eat the frog”? It refers to the idea of doing your hardest task first, to give yourself a sense of accomplishment early in the day. It can be a great strategy for personal productivity, but I’ve found it doesn’t work well when planning my productions.

I prefer snowballs.

The snowball idea comes from rolling a snowball. You start small, slowly making the ball larger as you roll. Go from small to big gradually.

In production terms, that means starting small and simple on day one and slowly building on the early successes as the show goes on.

I like doing the hardest stuff in the middle of the schedule.

That way I can get everyone comfortable in their roles and characters, and we still have energy left to pull out some difficult scenes.

Film productions are grueling, and by the end of a shoot everyone’s at least got some level of fatigue. If you’ve saved the big action piece or a pivotal emotional moment for the last minute, there’s a good chance you’ll be rushed.

Keeping all this in mind, my goal for day 1 of Wild Boys was to get going with some easy scenes that let my main actress, Kate, get comfortable in her role.

Keeping it simple

We’d planned the ideal start to our day:

• 1 location
• 1 actor
• 1-way dialogue only (phone calls)

Then we added some small scenes with the Wild Boys and one more character.

We kept the coverage simple and shot most of the day on a tripod.

Our DP, Vincent Valentin, came up with an effective and simple way to light the main floor of the house, which ended up serving us well for the rest of the shoot.

Even with a schedule as ambitious as ours, we didn’t feel rushed and had time to get everything we wanted.

But as you and I have talked about many times, something always comes up.

On the first day of production, I woke up with a fever, snot running everywhere. I felt like I had been run over by a lawnmower.

But there was no way I would reschedule again.

This is where our meticulous planning and my hiring process saved us. Even though I was not at my best, my team was. Everyone knew their jobs, and because we had spent time before the shoot getting on the same page.

They pulled most of the weight that first day.

I couldn’t have been more grateful for my amazing collaborators.

In total, we shot:

• 10 scenes
• 26 setups
• 2 hours and 7 minutes of footage

The most important part for me as the director was that I got my main cast going.

Making our first day set us up and gave us momentum for the rest of the schedule.

Instead of feeling like we were already behind and failing, we felt like we could make this thing. Even as crazy as our schedule was.

How to do this on your next film shoot

If you like this approach, here’s my checklist for how to plan the perfect first day.

• Keep your schedule light; aim for 80% of what you’d plan to shoot on a regular day.
• Get your main actor(s) started with “easy” scenes.
• Avoid complications at all costs, be it action scenes, scenes that are emotionally intense, big technical rigs, or lots of extras. Keep it simple!
• Try to stay in one location.
• Expect the unexpected. Something always comes up on your first day; leave room for that something.

I hope that’s helpful.