I might just have to glue the phone to my head

The first lesson I learned when starting my role as producer is that when someone says 'I'll get back to you' or something similar, its all lies. They won't.

I learned this pretty fast, timidly starting my role I took this to be true from companies I was phoning, to be more exact Casting agencies and Letting agencies. So number one rule of producing? Phone people until they give up. Liz Bisset I'm looking in your direction.

So people who know me, I'm not the most organised person on the face of the planet. But really who is? I think the second rule of producing is making enough people think you know what your doing, I think it's just important to tackle each issue as it occurs, don't take a fit when one small or large thing goes wrong, this doesn't sort anything out.

What has occurred to me during these past few days whilst producing is, that although I'm not an organised person, I feel producing is forcing me to be more organised. I think this is definitely having a positive effect on me. I don't panic when I have to phone someone or deal with paper work. I think it was far to easy just to use not being organised in the past as an excuse for...well being lazy at times.

Another aspect of producing I like is that, well I know whats going on. Being the editor before I didn't really know what the hell was going on with the films. I like being in the know, its also good to have an input into the films. Just from location hunting to sourcing actors, its nice to have some form of input.

What terrified me before in production was budgeting, I really don't know why. I'm not going to say its easy, we shall see how the budget works out first. Although from what I've done so far its relatively straight forward. You get this amount you get this amount, don't like it?...well the art department can have your budget.

So producing? it is much more fun than I thought it would be. I really don't think I have phoned so many people in my life, than I have in these past few days. That was another phobia of mines, being a guy I'm used to short to the point phone calls "Meet you in ten? Yeah sounds good, Bye" Not this chit chatty business. I think I've come on leaps and bounds in terms of my skills of dealing with people over the phone. It's not quite as scary as I thought it was, after all if there rude...you can always just hang-up!

So with one week left before we shoot, I have sorted location (Thanks Charlotte :) we have the homeless man and the dog. Karen Hall is doing a fantastic job with props hunting and sourcing. We have atleast one person wanting to play Jackie. We are auditioning another on Monday (TBC) So we will atleast have some sort of film to show in just over two weeks time, I won't have to put a wig on as I thought I might have to.

So a week of solid producing, I can say it takes up all my time. It can be stressful at times, it means being stuck in a room with now windows all day. But well...you got to love it.